It’s still March for a couple more hours on the west coast, right? Just enough time to squeeze in one last shamrock-themed post for the year.
Aren’t these shamrock pins made by veeda great? Notice something interesting about them? They’re each made of three hearts! Add an I-cord and a pin at the back, and you’re all set for next March. So clever.
My husband tossed me a new DS game a week ago that he thought I would like. Turns out I more than like it—there are huge blocks of time over the past two weekends that I kind of can’t account for now, as if I had blacked out. These were, of course, hours that I spent zombie-eyed and clutching my DS close to my face.
Henry Hatsworth In The Puzzling Adventure is deceptively simple, comprised of a combination of platform and puzzle games, but it’s challenging and, as I found, totally addictive. Instead of writing more about it, I have to get back to playing now.
Check out John’s review of Henry Hatsworth on the A.V. Club. (And if you’re really into gaming, check out his coverage of last week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.)
Maybe everyone has seen this already? Just in case not:
I don’t want to make any assumptions about how great the movie will be based on the trailer, but it’s an amazing trailer, at least. (The Arcade Fire song is a nice touch.)
Love the poster, too.
Today is March 26th, but that’s apparently still “close enough” to Valentine’s Day for the Columbus Circle post office!
You may remember this display case from its autumnal theme that I photographed last October. The Valentine’s display is a bit more ambitious, with its paper cupid, fake roses, and tissue paper, and maybe the extra effort is why they decided to leave it up for an extra 40 days.
Or maybe the person who does the displays was laid off sometime around February 14th. That seems more likely, sadly.
A little glimpse of the next pattern to hit the Mochimochi Shop. (The image represents only one-third of what the entire pattern will be.) It’s coming in April!
The idea of going to SXSW was again tempting to me this year, but when I really thought about it, it would probably have been tons of waiting in lines (which I hate), loud noises (which I dislike), and standing in one place for hours at a time (which makes me woozy). So instead this year I sifted through A.V. Club and Pitchfork coverage, and came up with a few bands that I’m planning to be a fan of. These are they:
The Rural Alberta Advantage
I just bought their new (and first) album Hometowns. Everyone will like these Canadians.
Titus Andronicus
Nice punkly pop.
The Black & White Years
They are compared to Talking Heads a lot. They are also from Austin, which seems like a nice place to visit most of the year.
Parenthetical Girls
I just broke down and bought their 2008 album Entanglements. (I was planning to wait for a special occasion, but oh well.) It’s strange and silly and I love it. (You’ll probably hate it.)
Jenny Hart recently unveiled new embroidery patterns over at Sublime Stitching, including a great collection of designs by artist/musician Daniel Johnston!
I’ve been a Daniel Johnston fan for a while now, but I’ve especially had him on my mind recently because I finally saw the documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston a month or so ago. It was sad, but neat to see different aspects of his genius in footage from his earlier years.
I’m also a big fan of Jenny Hart, of course—I took an embroidery workshop with her a couple of years ago, and she was a great teacher and a huge inspiration to me when I was first thinking about publishing patterns. I love that she does so much collaboration with interesting artists and musicians.
This is a rough prototype for a working knitted clock that I made a long time ago.
The idea was that I would fit the knitting over some kind of box that contained a running clock on the inside, with the shaft and hands poking through a hole in the box and the knitting. For this version, though, I couldn’t find the right box, so I just used a sheet of plastic canvas for the front panel and the base, then stuffed the rest of the clock, and attached the battery-powered clock to the backside of the front canvas with lots of tape.
To prevent the hands from getting caught in the knitting, my dad sanded down these beatutiful cuckoo clock hands to be very thin. The clock works, but the hands did start catching on the dial every once in a while. And changing the battery when it finally dies will be an ordeal.
I still would love to create a series of knitted clocks, maybe for display at a show someday. But I would have to find the perfect box or other structure, and the perfect way to attach the knitting to the structure and the clock to the structure, and I would also have to find a clock with a still longer shaft.
For now, this one has been collecting dust on a shelf. But it’s nice to look at!