Readers of this blog know of our fondness for handmade things and our (OK, my) interest in eating locally. Turns out, the two concepts are converging in what today's NYTimes calls Slow Design. The story cites designers of everything from Tshirts to housewares, who are sourcing manufacturing from local artisans and—in the case of the clock pictured here by Icelandic designer Thorunn Arnadottir—encouraging people to literally slow down. I'm loving both the metaphor and the design of this clock, a string of beads draped over a sprocket; one bead falls every five minutes. (As the Times article notes, "Remove the beads, and you get to stop time.")