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Neutral Milk Hotel, Revisited

I found out yesterday that my unhappy hard drive, which was being tinkered with by the second set of professionals, is not recoverable after all, and I’ve lost about a year’s worth of data. Fun!

It’s fine really—when I finally accessed what I actually lost, there’s little that cannot be replaced or forgotten about. I now have my computer back with a new hard drive, and one of the first things did was go back through my old CDs so that I could have something to listen to after three music-less weeks.

intheaeroplaneGoing through my college-era albums, I realized that I hadn’t had Neutral Milk Hotel on my computer in a long time. Remember them? If you kind of do, it’s a good time for a re-listen. And if you don’t remember them, you should get the CD (or download from iTunes and back it up for goodness’ sake). In The Aeroplane Over the Sea is a beautiful listen, with trumpets, lo-fi noise, and references to The Diary of Anne Frank. Hearing it now makes me think of it as a precursor to some of The Decemberists’ better songs—it’s thoroughly situated in the late 1990s (Neutral Milk Hotel was part of the Elephant Six collective), but the sad and touching images it evokes are from an earlier era.

I’m not the first person to revisit In the Aeroplane Over the Sea this year—Taylor Clark wrote about Jeff Magnum in a Slate article on the 10th anniversary of the album back in February. Clark wrote about how Magnum bowed out of the music scene after releasing Aeroplane, with no signs of returning. All the more reason to appreciate this album.

giolou’s Pundits

Tester giolou (of the Sails vs. Slugs baseball series) did a swell job trying out the Pundit Babies pattern for me before I released it last week. I was happy to see pics of her adorable results!

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She used Lamb’s Pride worsted yarn for her stout little mascots.

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The reading material she posed them on might give away giolou’s personal leanings, but she claims to love both of these guys equally!

Thank you to giolou, and also Oiyi, Jessica, and Hannah for testing!

Super Shoes

Yesterday we got word that after more than two weeks of working on it, the tech people who had my broken hard drive were unable to recover any data. It’s now been shipped off to some other, better tech people in California, who will spend another seven days seeing what they can do. But for the sake of sanity, I’ve decided to assume that all is lost and it’s time to move on. It’s also time for some new shoes.

entwineI found the perfect pair of metallic flats early this summer, and I’ve pretty much worn them every day since. They’re called Entwine, made by Hush Puppies, and they are sooo comfortable and gorgeous. Before I wear them out completely, I figured I should get another pair. So I just got a pair in black (the ones pictured at right are “apricot metallic,” the one color I don’t have), which aren’t as gorgeous as my metallic ones, but still comfortable. And for no reason at all, Zappos delivered them next day.

Wow, writing about shoes is really boring. But I love these shoes, so I thought I might let people know about them.

Crocheted Toy in Fuse Ad

I noticed this ad for Fuse (a music-oriented cable channel I’ve never seen) on a big screen when I was walking by Times Square the other night. There aren’t too many ads that feature little crocheted toys and Old 97’s songs, so I thought it was worth sharing. Anyone know who made the toys?

Announcing Pundit Babies!

Election season is now at full tilt. Get through the coming months of negative ads, dodgy debates, and endless analysis with a new pattern from the Mochimochi Shop!

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Make a tiny army of your party animal of choice, or knit up one of each if you’re a swing voter!

Techniques include knitting in the round on double-pointed needles, I-cord, and mattress stitch.

Buy the bipartisan pattern as a PDF download for $5 here.

Beep Boop Crash

My hard drive crashed last week. The techy people I took it to told me it would be a week to fix, but it’s now been well over a week, and their new estimate is “we have no idea how long it’s going to take.”

I was hoping to keep this mundane and somewhat embarrassing news (no, I hadn’t backed it up in a loong time) out of the blog, but the situation has disrupted my work and brought a few of my projects to a halt, and I’ve also lost some photos I had been planning on sharing on my blog. It’s taking long enough now that it seems like time to whine publicly.

In the meantime, I’ve started scrambling to replace stuff I’ve lost (only temporarily, hopefully). Among these things is a new top-secret pattern coming very very soon.

Disco Smurf’s Captain Capacitor

I get so excited when I see the first completed toy that someone else has made from one of my patterns. It always seems like a small miracle that a few lines of written instructions can yield a similar but totally unique creation in another’s hands.

Disco Smurf was eager to make a Captain Capacitor for her dad for Father’s Day (it’s coming up soon in Australia, apparently), and she’s already finished!

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Love his expressive eyes!

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By the way, the pattern for Resisty the Resistor will be coming a bit later, so stay tuned!