When I arrived at Temari Central, I was not feeling the Zen.

I was feeling my head, aching with the rigors of a day of problem-solving, a long drive north on one of my least-favorite Raleigh roads and a tinge of weariness at the prospect of learning something new.

I was met by a calm Barbara Suess and a table overflowing with temari. A folk art of Japan, temari are thread-wrapped balls overlaid with multicolored strands in various geometric figures. The patterns are mysterious and mesmerizing, soothing to study and begging to be held. They are akin to elaborately painted Ukrainian eggs, without the fragility. Picking them up yields a surprise: Many of the balls have a little jingle or jangle inside, adding to their mysterious nature. Suess made all of the balls, which range in size from a wee ½ inch to about 10 inches.

"I love every one," Suess says. "I would love to do every one of them again in a different color."

Her threads are secure because she intends for her balls to be held and rolled about. One of their powers, I find, is absorbing tension. A thoroughly modern use for an ancient craft.

"It's been around 500 or 600 years," Suess said. "Why haven't we heard of it?"

According to the Japan Temari Association, the original temari was made from deer skin and used by nobility for games. Ladies of the court began wrapping the balls in silk threads to decorate them. Before long, the competition was among the ladies more than the lords, as they aimed to make lovelier temari. The craft was adopted by non-nobility, to use as toys for children, rather than grown-ups, and regional styles developed.

Rubber balls eclipsed the popularity of temari, but the traditional folk art experienced a resurgence in the 20th century. The real art of temari emerged in Japan in the 1980s, Suess said, with a huge increase in temari design books. Suess has many of them, and since she knows the technique, she just followed the illustrations.

Suess lived in Japan for four years, from 1987 to 1991, but didn't learn to make temari until she returned to the United States. She saw a bowlful of them at her sister's house and discovered that her sister knew how to make them. Suess and her daughter, Alison, then 13, checked a book on temari out of the library in January 2000 and set to work. Suess, a longtime quilter and embroiderer, was somewhat mystified by the process. Alison disappeared into her room and emerged three days later with a completed, intricately stitched ball.

Temari is like that: completely absorbing. And once you demystify the arrangement of wraps and stitches, it's not difficult. Temari means "to wind by hand." Making temari is like winding a ball of yarn, but done very mindfully.

Getting started

Temari begins with a core. The materials are basic: two plastic bottle caps, a jingly thing (mine has a yen coin and two beads); a knee-high stocking; about a cup of rice hulls; several yards of soft yarn and several yards of thread, which is the background color of the temari. To learn how all that ends up being a sturdy ball, you'll have to read Barbara Suess' new book: "Japanese Temari: A Colorful Spin on an Ancient Craft" (Breckling Press, $24.95). You could use a styrofoam ball as a core and cover it with serger thread -- but then you won't be able to put a jingle inside. And a handmade core is much nicer to sew on, Suess says.

If my weariness showed, Suess was gracious enough not to let on, as she eased me through the most tedious portion of the process: Marking the ball with the guiding lines. Think of this as making a sketch before you start a painting. The process involves a strip of paper and several pins of different colors. Once points are marked, a thread is wrapped along lines joining the points and secured at the intersections to form the basis of the pattern. Suess reminds me that this is a folk craft, so precision is not necessary.

Temari are layered in earthy images. The ball is marked according to the Earth's axis, from North Pole to South, then around the equator. The stitches are made "underground," through the "core" of thread wraps. The names in Japanese are evocative of earthiness; the names of Suess' designs are earthy with hints of the East: "Hands Around the World," "Long Life" "Guardian Star," "Heaven's River."

The ball I made is "Autumn Moon," a name that reflects not only the colors Suess chose for her model, but also the full orb of the autumn sky, with simple accent stitches that reflect the autumn harvest. With silvery threads as guiding lines, I began wrapping, like adding paint to a drawing. The skills needed are minimal: Winding string around a ball and making straight stitches to secure the ends and crossover points.

By the time I was wrapping golden floss around the equator, I realized that I was headache-free for the first time all day. I was pleasantly surprised by the symmetry and play of color shaping itself under my hands. I thought of nothing but laying one thread along another. I did not think about the next color, the next step until it came. It all flowed together. I didn't even notice that Suess had completed her ball and set it aside, and had, in fact, gone into the next room to fetch more balls to show me. When she showed me one ball, my mind goggled a bit at the interplay of pentagons and triangles. I turned back to Autumn Moon, one of the simplest designs in the book.

As I put in the final glittering stitches, she talked of making the book. With each pattern, she paired a haiku, researched in UNC's Davis library, where she pored over tomes of text now in the public domain. An artist friend, Peggy Taylor, painted a watercolor image that reflects the spirit of each ball. The patterns themselves are arranged from simple to complex, layering one method upon another.

As I gathered up the scraps of thread -- they're called "orts," if you want to be all properlike -- I noticed that the brown floss I used was really striking against my green shirt. If I paired those colors against a black core, with a touch of gold ... hmmm.

Suess looked at the temari.

"It's not like you can sleep with it, like a blanket, or wear it," Suess said, not really apologetically.

But it is a thing of beauty. And it has powers beyond itself, both in the making and the holding. Make one your own self and find out. Headache optional.