Website of posts and photos from Lisa, aka Olive Octopus.
Ten Fountain Pens July 17th, 2026 A challenge going around the circles of those who love and talk about pens is "If you could only keep ten pens...." I value how these prompts challenge my comfort zone and give me a new and often valuable perspective, but to get through this one I needed to narrow the scope—for this exercise I'm setting aside all individual or small maker pens. Many of these…
2026 St. Louis Pen Show July 3rd, 2026 Last weekend I visited the St. Louis Pen Show for the first time. This show has been on my list in large part to catch a different group of people and vendors, so I was planning on a quick trip to see a new pen show and meet friends, but about a month before the show I was asked about hosting a seminar about ink swatching like I did in Arkansas. I sent some…
Col-o-dex Update: 3 Years In May 1st, 2026 I've been intending to write an update about this project for <checks watch> over a year. Part of what's held me back was self-imposed pressure to do a thorough audit and pull together stats about the exact number of cards, how many of those cards have sketches, etc., but you know what? The specific stats don't matter. I have a lot of cards stored in four…
2026 Atlanta Pen Show April 10th, 2026 The first pen show I ever attended was the Atlanta Pen Show in 2023, and I've gone back every year since. So much has changed for me since then—a few years later and now this was the third pen show I've attended so far this year. Due to the show shifting earlier (falling on the weekend right after the Arkansas show), and coinciding with another event…
2026 Arkansas Pen Show April 3rd, 2026 There were at least five major pen or stationery events in the U.S. in March, and I attended two of them. On the weekend before last I visited the Arkansas Pen Show in Little Rock for the second year in a row. After going to this show last March, I got more involved with the Arkansas pen community, visiting their pen club a couple times in between shows and…
2026 Philly Pen Show January 25th, 2026 This year I visited the first pen show of the year in the US—the Philly Pen Show . Since I have family in the area I combined this trip with a delayed holiday visit, and invited them to come check out the pen show. Despite the forecast for a dry weekend, there was snow on Saturday and Sunday that made travel difficult for my family (the snow wasn't too…
25 Memorable Inks in 2025 January 17th, 2026 With this annual series of posts I give myself one more slot each year for a memorable ink, but with over 300 entries added to my Fountain Pen Companion ink collection list in 2025, it's still not easy. As a reminder, this is a list of memorable inks from the year—they may not have been released in 2025 and are not necessarily the best or my only…
2025 Fountain Pen and Stationery Highlights January 2nd, 2026 I really appreciate the prompt questions that circle around the pen community, get me out of my comfort zone, and challenge me to reflect on things with a different perspective. At the beginning of December on A Gathering of Curiosities RB posted their #2025StationeryHighlights as a seven-question journaling prompt which I have used as…
Video Games December 26th, 2025 I reside in both digital and analog worlds. I've been glued to a computer since the 90s but have always taken notes, made lists, etc. on paper. My cell phone has a built-in stylus that I use to jot down handwritten notes on the screen when I'm not connecting with online communities via Discord, Twitch, YouTube, or social media. My day job is building things for the…
10 More Useful Things December 14th, 2025 About a year ago I shared 10 Useful Things that have become a regular (often daily) part of how I use my pens and ink. Here I'm expanding on that list with ten more useful items that have helped me build creative environments, support adjacent or overlapping interests, or make life a little easier—or simply more fun. No. 1 Felt Right Panels Several…
Fountain Pen Day, 5 Years Later November 14th, 2025 After becoming aware that "modern" fountain pens exist and weren't just for calligraphy (or Very Fancy Business People), then absorbing information about pens and inks like a sponge for several months (in large part by listening to The Pen Addict podcast), I placed my first fountain pen order. This was back in 2020, the year that didn't go how…
Ink Swatching Tools Update September 26th, 2025 I wrote a post about testing different fountain pen ink swatching tools over a year ago. My main conclusion at the time was that a variety of non-porous (metal, glass, silicone, plastic, etc.) tools could produce similar swatches that I greatly preferred over cotton swab swatches, and the decision of what to use going forward came down to which tools…
Relay for St. Jude (2025) August 29th, 2025 It's (basically) September yet again, and I'm joining the Relay podcast network (home of the Pen Addict podcast ) community to support the life-saving work of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. I originally started streaming on Twitch as OliveOctopusInk to spread awareness of the campaign during September in 2023. Now that September is here again I…
#12PenPersonQuestions August 22nd, 2025 A lot has been swirling around in my thoughts for the past few months—my relationship with journaling, interview questions and answers, the nature of the audio and video content being created in the fountain pen world, my first posts here being responses to question lists that prompted me to look at things from new perspectives, random lyrics from…
2025 Washington DC Fountain Pen Supershow August 8th, 2025 I spent this last weekend at what is probably the largest pen show in the US—the Washington DC Fountain Pen Supershow . With four large rooms plus hallways full of vendors and a full lineup of workshops and seminars, there was a lot to see and do! I decided to drive to the show and thus was able to bring a lot of my swatches,…
Dominant Industry Ink Archiving Book: A Log of Elixir July 11th, 2025 Earlier this year, the second edition of the Dominant Industry Ink Archiving book, A Log of Elixir, was released. The Ink Archiving books are B6 hardcover volumes filled with thick, 100g/m² fountain pen friendly paper and pre-printed designs for creatively swatching and exploring fountain pen ink. I've been really enjoying…
Interview with an...? May 27th, 2025 As much as I wanted Inkpire, Vinkpire, Vampinkre... to work for this post title, I'll take the L with that portmanteau attempt. (Don't drink the ink!) But how would I describe myself? An inkcyclopedia? That feels too structured and others are doing that better. Inkfluencer? No, that may be an incidental side effect but that doesn't fit either. What about…
2025 Atlanta Pen Show Highlights April 18th, 2025 So much has happened since I attended my first fountain pen show in Atlanta in 2023, it's hard to believe it's only been two years. After venturing to that show on my own only knowing a handful of names/screen names from the internet, I'm so thankful to have gotten to know so many people in the community that by this year, I was on my way to the…
2025 Arkansas Pen Show March 30th, 2025 My second pen show trip of the year was about a 5 hour drive down to Little Rock, Arkansas for the 2025 Arkansas Pen Show . This is a smaller show with about 30 vendors, put on by the local pen club. Darail Penz One of the first tables I stopped at was Darail Penz , and while a pen didn't catch my eye this time, I looked through their swatch book to pick out…
Leveling Up with Tea March 7th, 2025 I'm not a tea expert but over the past several years I've leveled up my XP enough to be able to try and enjoy a much wider variety of tea. Besides water, tea is the only beverage I consume on a regular basis—yet I'm not currently willing or able to dedicate a lot of time or money to making tea, so I've worked to find tools and techniques to be able to…
2025 California Pen Show February 21st, 2025 As much as I was looking forward to some time away, including attending The California Pen Show , I can't say I wasn't nervous about travel or feeling guilty about wanting to enjoy a trip with everything going on in the world. But, on the other hand I knew how rejuvenating it would be to take this trip to support and spend time with the pen community.…
24 Memorable Inks in 2024 January 19th, 2025 Ok, hide your wallets (or don't, I'm not your financial advisor)—it's time for me to recount the most memorable inks I encountered in 2024. Looking back, this was a year filled with shimmer, the search for interesting blues, readable yellows, and earthy browns, and as always collecting all the best swampy inks. About halfway through the year I…
Dominant Industry Ink Archiving Book: A Log of Atlantis December 18th, 2024 The Dominant Industry Ink Archiving Book: A Log of Atlantis is a hardcover B6 coloring book for fountain pen inks, and hands-down one of the products I have enjoyed most this year. The book has an elegant dark blue cover with bronze gold foil, filled with over 250 pages of ivory 100gsm fountain pen friendly paper. The page…
10 Useful Things November 22nd, 2024 Several months ago I shared a "pouch dump" post of my to-go kit for pen meetups and shows , but most of those items are sold by pen vendors and likely already familiar to pen people. Now I want to share, in no particular order, a list of ten things that have become an integral part of my usage of fountain pens and inks but are more likely to be found in your…
You Can Keep Only One?! November 1st, 2024 No, this is not a scary spooky season post! It's just a thought experiment, I promise. Back in April, the "you can only keep one from each brand" question was applied to fountain pens by Rachel at Rachel's Reflections , and others in the community shared their own choices.The most challenging prompt you could give me is ranking items or picking…
Layers of Color Oct 4th, 2024 I am fortunate to have a relatively large amount of control over my living environment, and I have chosen to surround myself with color. One of the very first things I did here was paint bold colors on the walls and hang colorful curtains, and I've added more "layers of color" over the years. Walls Rooms started out looking like this, with mostly white walls and…
St. Jude 2024 Campaign: Milestone Stream Recaps September 25th, 2024 There's less than a week left to support St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital during the month of September! The 12 hour Relay "Podcastathon" stream from a studio at St. Jude was this past Friday and among all the games and silliness there are always incredible videos and interviews with people connected to St. Jude, from…
San Francisco Pen Show 2024 Highlights September 20th, 2024 I decided to attend one of the large U.S. pen shows this year. Although the D.C. Pen Show is much closer (even driveable), the mix of vendors, likely attendees, and general vibes of "The Fun Pen Show" pointed me toward San Francisco for 2024. San Francisco Since I was traveling across the country to a city I've never been to, I wanted to…
Relay for St. Jude (2024) September 10th, 2024 It's September again, and I'm joining the Relay podcast network (home of the Pen Addict podcast) community to support the life-saving work of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Last year I left my comfort zone far behind to start streaming on Twitch as OliveOctopusInk to spread awareness of the campaign during September, then much to my surprise I…
2024 Atlanta Pen Show Highlights April 15th, 2024 This pen show weekend, April 4th - 7th, was a lot of fun and flew by so quickly! Most of these highlights are about the "haul" because I didn't take a lot of pictures at the show and mostly want to show off the cool things people made, but overall I continue to find this community overflowing with creativity, kindness, inspiration, shared passion,…
Ink Swatching Tools March 31st, 2024 Since I'm swatching fountain pen inks constantly, I needed to find reusable swatching tools that could be cleaned easily at my desk with a small amount of water and a drying cloth. I've been using other tools for a while, trying out a variety of swatching and dip-pen tools. For this post I've compared 5 different tools swatching the same three inks on Sanzen…
Pen Meetup Toolkit February 5th, 2024 I've assembled a handy kit of tools and accessories into a small pouch that I can easily throw into the bag for pen meetups. Items get swapped out or added as I refine what I like to have at hand. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the state of the kit right now, except for one loose end I'm still sorting out. I also like to have a dedicated small notebook ready…
23 Memorable Inks in 2023 January 2, 2024 To close out a year filled with exploring and collecting inks like Pokémon, I reflected back on 23 inks that stood out most in 2023. This list is roughly in the order of when I first encountered or spent time with an ink and isn't limited to inks released in 2023—any inks that crossed my path and made an impression during 2023 were considered. Inks…
Boo October 13th, 2023 On Wednesday, September 13th, we had to say goodbye to our beloved cat, Boo. A big personality in a tiny frame, my housemate and I had the privilege of being her family for nearly all of her 16 years. She was special, and the hole she leaves in our lives is testament to how much she meant to us. No amount of photos or words can capture everything that she was, but I'd like…
Relay FM for St. Jude August 31st, 2023 It is nearly September, Childhood Cancer Awareness month. After raising more than $2.2M since 2019, the Relay FM community is joining together for a fifth year to support the life-saving work of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital throughout September. St. Jude builds hope by pursuing their mission of finding cures & saving children, sharing their…
120 Col-o-dex Cards August 25th, 2023 Earlier this year, after about two years of using fountain pens and surrounded by a growing ink collection, I wanted to refresh my Col-o-ring and explore other ideas for swatching inks—this time with a more deliberate and personalized style. Finding My Style The first step for finding my style was looking back through notebooks and photos. Back in…
#17InkQuestions August 6th, 2023 Since I'm obsessed with fountain pen inks, it's time for my own #17InkQuestions! These questions were written with fountain pen inks in mind, but if you answer the questions yourself feel free to interpret "ink" or adapt the questions however you like. Question 1 What was your first (memorable) ink? One of the first bottled inks I used was Ink Institute Jade Vine,…
#5MorePenQuestions July 23rd, 2023 I made it through the #21PenQuestions list, time for #5MorePenQuestions from The Gentleman Stationer . Question 1 Why do pens and stationery continue to play such an important role in your life, especially in an age when everything is supposed to be going paperless and digital? I have a lot of information stored digitally but it's dispersed, processing all that…
#21PenQuestions July 16th, 2023 Here are my answers to the #21PenQuestions from The Well-Appointed Desk . Question 1 What is the pen they'll have to pry out of your cold dead hands? The Sailor Pro Gear Slim "Nuts" pen with the colorway based on the Manyo Shirakashi and Yamabuki inks. My pen has a lovely medium nib and is inked with Shirakashi. The pen body is in the neighborhood of my favorite…