Thin strokes, thick strokes: 1.1 Lamy stub nib & Lamy Turquoise

As the dusk leaves its place to the night, the world seems to still. The constant breeze stops, not even a leaf moves. Frantic birds don’t shoot up from the trees, fuzzy bumble bees stop bumping into your arms, bells of the neighbouring goats lull. Smell of a newly lit barbecue lingers in the air. Some kids yell and laugh a few streets below, perhaps rushing to dinner. Eventually, the streetlights turn on, illuminating the near dark world. Then, the subtlest breeze picks up, ruffling the leaves of olive trees. Just like that, the cacophony of cicadas starts again, a dog starts barking, mosquitoes start buzzing. The nightly sounds of the world settle once more.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by the Lamy Safari. Colourful barrels and the iconic clip have captured my attention -perhaps also my imagination- like no other pen ever did. I still keep at least one inked up at all times and own many more. Not many nib sizes are available with the pens that are being sold off the shelf, but the spare nibs are easily accessible. They also fit some of the other models of Lamy pens, like the Studio or even the Aion with its narrower, pointier nib. It’s quite handy to keep a few around to switch things up every now and then.

One of those nibs is a 1.1 stub, currently residing in my Mango Lamy Safari. I don’t think they sell it in a pen, except for the Joy, the longer cousin of the Safari. This was my first stub nib, mostly because the nibs are so easy to change. Some pens are a little finicky about nib swapping, requiring careful aligning and threading. And that’s only if the nib is meant to be removed by the user. These nibs are easy. So easy. Just pull it straight out, you can even do it with your fingers.

The reason I didn’t start using stub nibs until later in my pen-adventure (penventure?) simply because they tend to be too thick for my writing. Or so I thought. 1.1 stub is a good compromise in that regard. It’s not so thick that it’s unusable, even though it’s not as thin as I’d prefer. For that, the sharper fine cursive italic of the Pilot Kakuno is more comfortable.

The nib itself is almost as smooth as the B nib I have from Lamy. It has a bit of a drag on the page. Not feedback, but it’s like the paper is soft. Like trying to drag it on cloth. It has been like this on a couple of different papers, and I doubt the humidity is high enough to mush the paper. The corners are well-rounded and have never dug into the page. I like using this pen for journaling and essay writing. It forces me to write larger and be more mindful of the act of writing. Writing slower also means that I get to think about what I’m going to write a bit more, even for a fraction of a second.

Oh, besides that. It’s so pretty. It makes my writing look so pretty. Especially my chicken scratch cursive.

There is a bit of a sweet spot to the writing angle, although it’s large and easy to find. I feel like my hand automatically settles into it after writing a letter or two. But then, I have a pretty regular grip with a low holding angle.

Overall, this nib is a joy to use. A little flair and extra is something we all need in life sometimes, especially in relatively boring stuff like writing long essays or making to-do lists. Picking up a bright orange pen and a wonderful nib certainly makes my day go by easier.

Thank you for reading, and thank you Chloe for this wonderful opportunity to write in her blog.

Surprise! The part above was the post that was published when I wrote the guest post. I also want to mention the ink I’ve used here, Lamy Turquoise.

I don’t tend to use bright blue or turquoise inks very often, simply because I prefer more muted colours. In the rare instances that I want to use a bright blue ink, I have a pretty special one in my mind: Rohrer & Klingner Blu Mare. That is my favourite bright blue/turquoise ink. I’ll group both those colours into one for the sake of this review as I prefer my greens and blues just like how I prefer my milkshake and fries: separate. No blue-green turquoises for me. And the reason why I love that ink so much is exactly that. It is a beautiful bright blue with subtle shading and a pop of pink sheen.

It’s my most used ink already, I only have half the bottle left. Other colour families have subtle hue differences I like between the inks, so one ink almost never gets that consistently used.

Quite frankly, that is the exact reason why I like the Lamy Turquoise ink. The shading is good, and the colour matches those blue summer skies that I love so much. A sky in a bottle. The sea that I love so much on the page.

Lamy Turquoise still feels a little drier to me, and it seems that it’s harder to show the sheen of it. Otherwise, the only reason I prefer the R&K Blu Mare over this one is that I already have a bottle of it. I had seen people rave about Turquoise so much that I only got a pack of cartridges, and I passed them over in favour of Blu Mare every single time. I also tend to like Rohrer & Klingner inks more, both behaviour-wise and colour-wise.

I’ll add some photographs from the Greek island of Kefalonia too, since the sea has so many colours there.