Finished this last night too late to photograph even though the sun was hanging around waiting to have its longest day. The icy blue of this snapshot, taken before the sun gets to this side of the house, is also indicative of how cool the house is. Both Werner and I are wearing scarves around our necks.

I started on the pelican last night. Worked a couple of hours before I decided I did not like the way the beads were going down. So I cut it all out and redid it and now I am very happy with the way the scoop beak looks. I see that by doing these animals I have a lot to learn about embroidering around shapes. Whether one beads around, across or up and down makes a huge difference in how an animal looks. I have been unhappy with beading the belly of these animals either vertically or horizontally. In the belly are the pellets and they are there to give the animal posture. On the bear I tried using an over all picot stitch (just little bumps of beads) on the tummy and this method also got too stiff. Maybe I used too many? The stars look just too weird to repeat. I could use an opaque bead the next time.
BTW I solved the question of the size of these beads. Among the beads in one vial were some real 15s mixed in and I could see they are much smaller. This means I have no clear AB 15s and the whole bear was done in 11s.