Charlie Cushing's company LanternSmith has really carved itself out a rather unique niche among poi spinners for creating really comfortable and functional handles. The company's latest efforts are similar in form factor to PX3 knobs but are made of silicone and are wonderfully soft and grippy. Here, Ted Petrosky and I review the handles after an afternoon spent playing with them. You can pick them up here: http://www.lanternsmith.com/poi_ropedart_meteor/pom_grip.html

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Following up on a great suggestion from TZ Rogers, Charlie Cushing and I spent the last couple fire festivals working on coming up with a way to use Lanternsmith's handles for fire poi. The benefits are that the silicone handles feel great in the hand and because they glow in the dark they're difficult if not impossible to lose. To achieve the weight I prefer for my handles, we wound up cutting a handle in half but it's worked out well enough Charlie is going to start molding handles to that form factor.

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A couple weeks ago Charlie was kind enough to send me one of the prototypes of his new glow poi at Lanternsmith. They don't work like normal glow poi where you have an LED element with a battery at the end of a tether. Instead you charge them up using some high-powered LEDs and they glow in the dark for several minutes before you recharge them again. Here is a demo of the poi in action as well as some thoughts on their use an efficacy.

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