Artisanal Pencil Sharpening.

This is not a joke. First we had Slow Food, then Slowear, then, well, Slow Everything (Praise the Lord: I LOVE Slow Stuff) and now we have real, proper, slow pencil sharpening. David Rees, a political cartoonist who lives in a part of the US over-flowing with artisanal food producers, has become an artisanal pencil sharpener; really, he has. For about £15 he will select a pencil, sharpen it to perfection for you and mail it to Britain. It all sounds at once beautiful and bonkers to me and I love it. There's an LA Times article about Mr Rees via our title above. Apparently -and google doesn't seem to want to confirm this- a book by Rees is to come called “How To Sharpen Pencils: A Practical and Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening, for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, and Civil Servants, with Illustrations Showing Current Practice.”