When physics and knitting collide - the results aren't always good

I'm trying to do random, but I just find it so hard. My personality dictates that everything has to have symmetry, it has to add up, there must be a method.

But I'm making a big effort. The beads above are a case in point. I'm using them for my Mystery Stole 3, stringing two tiny beads with a .75mm crochet hook as I go. Go here if you'd like to know how this is done. If you look closely, you can see that there are three different kinds of grey metallic beads and one kind of sparkly bead. They are good quality glass seed beads, bought from here at the Darling Harbour Show.

The random bit goes like this. I fish around with the crochet hook until I pick up a charcoal bead. Then I pick up a sparkle, and they go onto the stole together.

See? Random. And symmetry. At the same time.

Anyhow, as I've been fishing around in the little pile of beads I've been feeling quite frustrated. I felt like the beads were running away from the hook. It was quite annoying. Stab stab stab. No bead. Stab stab stab. No bead.

I mentioned this to my husband. He looked at what I was doing (it's rare people).

'I can see what's going on there' he says 'after you've picked up a bead, you're dropping that steel stick and it's being pulled against the magnet on that black thing you've got the chart on, thus magnetising it. Then when you go fishing into the beads, which all have metal paint on them, sometimes the opposite polar effect is happening, and the hook is really repelling the beads.'

You know what? I think he's right.

Not to worry though, because the clue is done. Stage 2 of my own Tour De France complete.