Kurume kasuri begins with thread. Specifically, with thread that has been bound at intervals before dyeing — the bound sections resist the indigo and remain white, while the rest takes the color, and when the thread is woven into cloth, the white sections create the characteristic blurred patterns that give kasuri its name. The technique sounds simple and is not. The binding determines everything: the width of the white sections, their spacing, the precision of the pattern that emerges from what is essentially controlled accident. Farmers' wives in the Kurume region developed this method in the early nineteenth century as a supplementary income, and within a few generations it had become one of Japan's most recognized textile traditions. The workshops in Kurume offer the experience of working with indigo-dyed thread in a city that has been living with this craft for two hundred years. The smell of indigo is particular and persistent. The weight of the thread is different from what you expect. The pattern that begins to appear as you work is both yours and not yours — you are following a method older than anything you have previously made.