Arriving in Surat Thani a few hours before my train was scheduled to depart, I had free reign to take in the local market a couple of blocks from the station. It was there that I happened upon one of the many tiny office supply shops I’d grown to love browsing during my stay in Thailand. And inside I found one of the more interesting pencils of my trip: the Lyra Groove Slim.

Although I picked up the Groove Slim in Thailand, where most pencils are locally-made, this isn’t a Thai pencil at all — it’s German! Lyra is a German company with a long history of making pencils. Today it’s owned by the FILA group, which also owns Dixon pencils among many others. Apparently the Lyra pencils are still made in Germany. A Google search for the company indicates that they’re most famous for their colored pencils, but here we have a graphite example. So let’s get to it!

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