Simple animation

Pardon what may be an overly simplistic question for this forum. One thing I have noticed with second life is there is at times too much information available and sometimes the simple things are hard to find. I am using an object, scissors, which I can place in my hand. What I would like to do is move my arm and hand into a position to represent using the scissors at different angles and positions. This does not include moving the whole body just the arm(s), hand(s) and maybe leaning forward. How to accomplish this I am sure has many solutions and I am open to suggestions. Two ideas have come to mind:

1. Use an existing gesture/animation. As a specific example, there is the point at some one gesture (/pointyou, I think) which works quite well. The arm and hand end up at chest level in front of the avitar with the scissor blades on a horizontal plane. I am sure there are other "stock" gestures that would work. As mentioned above finding the simple things is sometimes not easy. I have looked at the gestures/animations that come with the base avitar. I attempted to search for more but keep finding complex full body animations. Where would be a good place to look for simple animations just involving arms, hands and upper torso?

2. Perchance there is a ??? that allows control of specific limbs while the avitar stands in place?

I do appreciate that animations can be programmed. Having read some of the posts here, programming these movements and positions is certainly possible. I am trying to find the most simplistic approach given my limited time. Any suggestions from the community would be greatly appreciated.

Looking at the list,

I'd guess the aims, punches, holds, fist, shoot, salute, smokes, and some others only animate the arms?

Otherwise having some custom arm animations made might be the best solution?

Are animations that move the mouth when talking ever going to be a probability?

Fiona, when you look at the face animation huds out there like Yadni's you can see that our avatar's faces definitely have a mesh designed to be moved. Our mouths have teeth and a tongue and I'm sure they can be made to look like the basic mouth positions used in speaking. Like so:

http://toonboomcartooning.wetpaint.com/page/lip+chart?t=anon

Don't know why it isn't implemented yet. Maybe too many resources needed to control it? Maybe they're afraid someone will cam into your house and be able to read your lips.