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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So...roll call, how many of us interested in QFT have ever bothered to watch Charlie's videos on the topic all the way through? The one on notation clocks in at an astounding 45 minutes and I'll confess that even though I've been working on the notation system with him for nearly a year, I've never watched the video all the way through. 45 minutes was just too long a commitment to make for something that didn't showcase any spinning and was all theory and instruction.

Charlie spins Saturday night Fall Wildfire 2011

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Charlie spins puppyhammer Sunday night Wildfire Summer 2011

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Charlie blindfold burn Sunday night Summer Wildfire 2011

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