Revisiting the Lamy "lined and grid" notebook

I originally got to play with one of these notebooks a while ago, and wrote about it here.

For some, it's a bit of a weird one, but it's absolutely perfect for what I need right now! The set-up is a little different to other notebooks. There is a 4mm grid on the page, but very other horizontal line is solid. The result is a 4mm grid, overlaid with an 8mm ruling.

This combination gives me both a ruled page (I ignore the 4mm grid bit) and a grid page. Why is this perfect for me right now? Because I need a notebook where I can write notes some days, but draw tables and collect data on others.

The notebooks come in a pack of three, and are available in A5 size (21 x 14.8 cm) or  A6 (15 x 10.5 cm). The covers are a grey coated card, that's pretty robust, with a linen-look. Corners are rounded, and the spine is sewn. There's minimal branding - just "Lamy" blind embossed on the back, and there are no "bells and whistles" - there's no ribbon marker, no back pocket, no table of contents and no page numbering. Given the price (£8.50 for three A5; £7 for three A6) this is not a surprise.

What is more of a surprise is how ink-friendly the paper is. I threw some of my wettest, most paper-unfriendly pens at it and it didn't bat an eyelid. No feathering, no bleed-through, no ghosting... fabulous!

Each notebook has 64 pages of 90gsm ivory paper, so you are getting a decent bang for your buck with these.

I think these are smashing notebooks, especially if you need to have the combination of lined and grid. Yes, you could use a dot-grid notebook, but at 5mm spacing, I find using every line is too tight, but using every other line seems wasteful. Lamy seem to have pitched this one just right.