The state of my workspace

Would you look at that? Now...before you say "What a mess!" let me assure you that this is a completely usable state. In fact, this table is shown to you mid-monkey. The monkey has presented a challenge to me as he is one of two rod puppets in the show. Now, rod puppets are usually not difficult...a head rod and two arm rods are usually all that is required. But our monkey needed not only the normal rods but foot rods/controls as well.
I could only think of one place I saw a full body rod puppet on a glove puppet stage and that was the Spring 2007 edition of The Puppetry Journal published by the Puppeteers of America. In this particular edition, a remembrance of Roger Mara also featured the complete design of his bobberhead rod puppets he designed for his production of Paul Bunyan. If you don't have this issue, I recommend that you send for a back issue.
The Bobberhead design was my inspiration for the string controlled legs of the monkey. See:

When he was all finished, I discovered a wonderful thing about this design...you can hold both the string bar and the arm bars in the same hand and when you pull back it makes his hands go back while his feet go forward in a monkey knuckle walk! It's so cool! I can hardly wait for you all to see it!