D., that's pretty slick.
I think I would invert clock with one of the unused inverters and drive the anode of LED2 with it. It would make the timing more 'symmetrical'. In fact, I think I would buffer the clock for both LEDs, just to be sure I'm not going to have marginal clock logic levels.
You could also run off QB and QD, which would allow a smaller timing cap - admittedly no big deal.
It still has more parts and requires more space than the microcontroller version.
As you said, it's probably cheaper, at least for a one-off.