T-Bird Anni Rides Again

We have sampled quite a few grippies over the past couple of years trying to find something that helped Aprilia hold a pen right and to make holding a pen more comfortable for me.  LDA do a mixed pack with

a short chunky little thing which flares my fingers out a little too far (well, okay, it probably puts them in a perfectly good position but it doesn’t feel like that to me) and which totally baffles Aprilia

a longer slimmer one which puts fingers in the right places and is reletively successful for Aprilia but if you use it on a hexagonal pen you can still feel the ridges which is one of the things that really "bothers" me (think  nails dragged down backboards for degree of botheredness)

and a squidgy triangular one which is rather lovely and fits Berol pens perfectly (the other 2 will only fit normal pencils cheap disposable sized pens)  but for some reason just doesn’t seem to float our boats when it comes to actually writing with them

The LDA pack also comes with a couple of those triangular pencils which she does rather like and are decent quality pencils.

Then I picked up the mixed pack that Crossbow put together.   This has a lot more choice in it and comes in a dinky little plastic box which instantly won favour as being a handy place to store all these odd little bits of plastic rather than them migrating all round the house like the contents of the other pack did as they didn’t come in any sort of container!  This pack has some really odd looking beasties in it.  They don’t have their own pages on Crossbow, all the grippies are on this page.

 the Triangular grip (and jumbo version) are hard plastic triangles, which neither of us liked

a similar but "softer" version is the Air grip which is a more flexible plastic and was quite passable, wouldn’t like to write an essay with it but could certainly happily jot notes with it and it doesn’t look so wierd that if anyone borrows your pen they will look at you like you’ve escaped the funny farm.

the Stubby is very like the short chunky one from LDA

the Solo is a bigger version of the above which I found much better as it doesnt’ flare you fingers out so far but wasn’t *quite* what I was looking for.

 the comfort one is just a nice foamy bit of stuff to make your pencil feel a bit softer under your fingers, doesn’t alter your grip at all but if it’s just down to not liking the hardness or whatever of a pen or pencil then these are lovely.  And again, no one will look at you like you’ve escaped the funny farm.

Teh ridged comfort is (in my not terribly humble opinion!!)  utterly horrid, but then ridges and edges are utterly horrid as far as I’m concerned so that’s hardly a surprise. 

Then you get the Ultra ones.  These are really wierd looking critters.  You would definitely get funny looks using one of these as a "grown up" but then, I wear funny glasses so why not have a funny pen grip too?  Your fingers sort of drape round them and there are no sharp edges etc.  They are made of really stretchy silicone stuff which means they will fit normal pencils and Berol type pens (wich a bit of soap to ehlp them slide onto the pen) unlike most of the rest of them.  The only complaint Aprilia had was that they felt a bit sticky at first but a quick wash cured that. 

the "normal" ultra is reletively small and just supports your fingers to just past the first knuckle to shape them round into a good grip.  they stop Aprilia trying to cram 2 fingers on the top of the pen (because the second finger just can’t reach round the "bulb" of the grippy so just curves naturally down underneith) and stop her clamping her thumb tightly against the side without flaring them out or looking awkward. 

The large version is huge and pretty much supports the whole fingers.  I liked it but it was too big for Aprilia which is fair enough, she is smaller than me and it "fitted" me perfectly. 

the cross-guard ultra is possibly the wierdest thing I’ve ever seen!  it’s the same basic design as the normal sized ultra but with a sort of T-bar added to the top that your thumb and first finger snuggle under.  Aprilia described it as like being hugged.  She really, really likes this one, as do I, but I will say that unless the person using it actually likes being compressed then it will probably be utterly awful as it really does snug down onto the fingers but as Aprilia seems to need to be squeezed and compressed at times it really hits teh spot for her.  So that’s what we will be getting for her to use for now but I’ll be keeping hold of all the other ones as I fully expect her to want something different in a year or so!