This post is completely out-of-date. Do not follow the instructions here. Node 0.12 should not be used anywhere.
You can just download the latest Node directly from the Node Foundation site for Raspberry Pi 1. e.g. in June 2017: https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v8.x/ and https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v8.x/node-v8.1.0-linux-armv6l.tar.gz
Unfortunately the 0.12.0 release of Node won’t compile on a non-V2 Raspberry Pi so I took a patch from io.js and was able to build it.
The problem is due to recent releases of Raspbian mis-identifying the ARM version so Node tries to build for V7 instead of V6. These two changes from this io.js thread sort it out.
It took a lonnnngggg time to build directly on my RPi Model B+.
Download here and enjoy.
wget https://d2j17b10ywb1i7.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/node-v0.12.0-linux-arm-pi.tar.gz
tar -zxvf node-v0.12.0-linux-arm-pi.tar.gz
cd node-v0.12.0-linux-arm-pi
sudo cp -R * /usr/local/
Works perfectly for Harp.js, including the ever-problematic node-sass with its native bits.