This is the photo of Claude that I wished was in the application. Here he feels more crab-like and less like a tarantula. He is really quite charming when you get to know him!

And already the Stellar jay bird is this far along. With him comes a story. On Sunday night Vicki called me to talk to me about my sales at CHAC. Yes they are down now that I am no longer doing jewelry and only the animals. So she gave me a pep talk about taking some time away from the animals to replenish the jewelry. She even offered books with ideas. I had just gone through my findings and beads looking for items to give to Rhoda to use for her summer camp classes and saw how much I had unused. From that I was already thinking of returning to jewelry  to make good use of what I had and then with Vicki's call I began to listen more closely to the urge. Monday afternoon I finished the crab and had the sunshine to photograph him. At that moment I could have easily made the switch to jewelry.
However, I turned my chair to search through the animals for a new one. All I really wanted to do was to get started on the next one. Here you see him. I had had the idea of using stone chips on him ever since I found in my stash a 'lost' bag of lapis lazuli. So there will be at least one more animal. Oh, I also found a new style ladybug so I suspect I will have to that next.