My Dark Lilac Lamy Safari just arrived, and it’s really excellent. This is the nicest Safari in years, in my opinion. And not just because it’s neither neon nor green. It just looks great.
I have heard that purple pens aren’t big sellers, which may be why Lamy waited so long to add one to the Safari lineup, but this is very smartly done. It’s less tween, more grownup. The textured plastic, which is also found on the Charcoal Safari, helps with that. There’s also the black clip and nib, and the dark boysenberry color of the pen.
I also bought cartridges of the Dark Lilac ink, which is similarly dark and actually very attractive.
Here is the Dark Lilac next to the Charcoal, to give a better sense of the color.
Thank you to Appelboom, who sent this very quickly.
Fountain Pen Follies 
I’ll definitely try the soapy water approach and let you know. Good to know though that this seems to be not only my problem but happening more often. And I really tried with several inks already, ranging from Pelikan 4001 through Diamine, Pilot Iroshizuku through to J. Herbin and Sailor Jentle. So there should have been a good one in there. 🙂
And yeah, I do the turning of the piston at those times, too, but it’s annoying to have to do that every two to four pages again. And since I’m very much used differently from my Pelikan piston fillers I get annoyed fast at converters 🙂 Might even go over to filling little empty cartridges with a syringe just to make that stop. It really annoys me. And there are long international cartridges that probably hold more ink than any converter anyways.
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I have had the same problem with converters, and I now flush every new international converter with soapy water a few times, then flush with plain water. That seems to do the trick.
I actually don’t do that with Lamy converters, which are made of a different plastic. However, I also haven’t bought a new Lamy converter for years.
I will say this: I find Lamy Safaris/Al-Stars to be dry writers, and they don’t seem to do well with every ink. No pen does, of course. However, I find Safaris more finicky about ink than, say, Pelikans. So it pays to experiment. If one ink doesn’t work with a particular pen, it may not be the fault of either. They just may not be a good match. You see that with people, too. 🙂
Another Safari/Al-Star/Vista trick: sometimes when the ink flow seems a little spotty, what’s really going on is that there isn’t much ink left in the converter, and/or the feed is a little starved. You can’t tell from looking at the converter, but if you turn the converter piston, you’ll see the converter ink level compress dramatically, and that ink, now pushed through to the feed, will suddenly start to flow perfectly again thorough the nib. With a Vista or Al-Star you can see the ink flooding into the section when you do that.
On the plus side you never get leaking or burping ink with a Safari. 🙂
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🙂 thank you. I still got my reservations about converter pens. I haven’t had one yet that worked well for me, perhaps I’m doing something wrong. The ink keeps drying up on me. I have absolutely no clue why. Perhaps you have a tip for me. It just keeps getting stuck at one end and refuses to get into the feed… I’m pretty certain I’m doing something wrong there. Though up until now I was using the international converters, not the lamy. Perhaps that one will work better for me.
Oooh, perfect. I’m still trying to decide on which ink to use. I have the Edelstein Mandarin, Topaz and Sapphire on the backlog and two Rohrer and Klingner inks, Alt-Goldgrün and Alt-Bordeaux. Decisions, decisions.
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That is a very pretty pen, I have to say. I really like the color. I hadn’t seen that one before, it’s gorgeous. And deserves some really great lilac ink, too. 🙂
And you might be proud of yourself to know that your Lamy enjoyment made me buy my very first Lamy Safari the other day just to see what the fuss is all about 🙂 I got me a clear one, I’ll try it out sometimes soon. Too many other pens, I swear I should stop with collecting and start the writing.
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No way! Congrats on the new Safari/Vista! I was writing with that exact pen today. Broad nib, KWZ Azure #2 ink for me. 🙂
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