The last six months have sped by. My hair looks like locs for the most part and hardly unravels anymore. My new challenge is integrating the loose hairs that pop up here and there with no place to go. My latchhook takes care of most of it but every now and then I find a completely new patch of hair that has to be dealt with.
I'm still dealing with shrinkage - the only time that I notice new length is when my hair is wet.
My hair related New Year's resolutions are:
- Cure my hand-in-locs disease
- Go to at least 6 weeks between latchings
I can't believe it's been almost 4 months since I put my baby locs in! I am a little surprised that I have managed to keep them in this long, but I haven't really missed my loose hair that much.
I was going to add some commentary about the loced life, perceptions, politics, and philosophy but I am tired. Maybe tomorrow.
I've got lots of buds and a few locs that are halfway loced. This is good.
Unfortunately, my hair does not want to behave most of the time. Usually a quick rinse will make it look neat, but latey I have not had time for that and I almost always have 4-5 locs that want to stick up or bend in the middle or in general not do what I want them to do.
Fortunately, I have headbands and hair clips. If I could get away with wearing a headwrap, I would but it is too damn hot for that.
Due to my baby locs, I have changed up my routine a bit.
Products currently in use (bolded if essential, italics if I am trying it out)
Clarifying shampoo - Avalon Organics Lemon Verbena Clarifying Shampoo
Shampoo - Oyin Grand Poo Bar
Conditioner - Oyin's Honey Hemp Conditioner,
Styling (latching/palm rolling) - FOTE Aloe Vera Gel, Oyin's Shine and Define
Daily Moisturizer - Water, Oyin's Greg Juice
Supplements - Women's One a Day
Post rinsing or shampoo - Nasabb Kelechi Hair Oil
Monthly:
Wash with clarifying shampoo and condition. Add oil and air dry.
Weekends:
Shampoo, add oil and air dry
0-1 per week (depending on the state of my hair):
Rinse hair in shower, add oil or Greg Juice as needed.
Daily:
Spritz with water and Greg Juice as needed.
Due to the sudden demise of space-pirates.org, I had to relocate the hair blog. Thank you to Jen and Bear for generously giving me server space for Beyond Locs for so long.
With the move, I decided to go back to the beyond locs title as well. even though I am locking right now, I have found that many locking resources are targeting people who a) do not have kinky, nappy hair of African descent or b) target people who are jumping from relaxing/texturizing into locking. I want to use this blog to collect resources for people who have loose natural hair as well.
Finally, I went back to the Beyond Locs title because I think that it was essential for me to get to know my loose natural hair before I locked. I think that my expectations of my hair are better because I am accustomed to the unpredictability of natural hair and I have redefined my standards of "neatness".
Anyway, I am going to slowly start moving posts over from the old blog. Slowly.
I thought that I would miss my loose hair more.
I put my twists in June 23 and except for a few that I redid to make the sections neater and make the sizing a little more even, I haven't had my hair loose since.
I thought that I would have missed my fro or at least playing in my loose hair. But it hasn't happened yet.
I am a little frustrated with my baby locs - I have never been fond of my shrunken twists because my shrinkage is pretty extreme - my twists are 2-3 inches long now and my loose hair is a lot longer than that. As a result, I'm having a little more trouble getting my hair to lay just the way I like it.
Although I put these twists in about two weeks ago, I am counting this as my first week of locking. I spent the last couple of days latching my twists and reining in the floating parts. Right now i think that I will latch about once a month and twist once a month - with about two weeks in between. Since I am on vacation right now and swimming everyday - I am getting my hair wet a lot more often than I would like - hence the latching.
I'm not quite happy with how my hair looks right now - I haven't been a fan of super shrunken twists for a while - but my hair feels soft and moisturized and it looks presentable for now.
When I started this blog, I named it "Beyond Locs" for a couple of reasons. First of all, at the time I started it at Blogspot there were not many online resources for people who wanted to learn more about how to maintain and style loose natural nappy hair.
Now there are many websites, blogs, photo albums, message boards that offer support and advice specifically for loose natural hair as well as locs and braid extensions.
My second reason was that so many people around me just assumed that the only point of being natural is to loc. For a while, it seemed like everyday someone would ask me when I was going to loc. There is more to wearing and styling natural hair than locs.
After 6 years of being a loose natural, I have had a lot of fun with my hair and worn a lot of different styles. I have learned to style and maintain my hair almost effortlessly and discarded a lot of nappy hair myths along the way.
Earlier this year, I started noticing more locked styles that I liked and started thinking that I would grow out my hair this summer and decide if I wanted to loc in the fall. "The fall" turned into August. Last week i decided that I would take down this set of twists, wash redo and loc. last weekend i decided to just redo the problematic twists and go from there.
So here I am with a new title for this blog that reflects the new direction I am going.
I've been thinking about locs for a while and I think that I am going to make the leap soon. I don't like my current set of two strand twists, so I am going to take down and restyle this set and then go from there.
I love my loose hair but every time I put in a set of twists, it is harder for me to want to take them out. I may wear a loose puff occasionally this month, but I think that my next set of twists will be starter locs.
Or at least have high humidity. My hair is suffering because of the dry, hot weather we have had for the last few months. Since we have made a couple of trips to the beach and the pool, I've been wearing twists (until they get wet and dry tangled), then a puff until I get tired of having to spend more than 2 minutes styling my hair in the morning, then twists again. Between the weather and the dry combing of my puff, my ends are looking ragged.
For the time being I'm in twists again and I will wear them at least through this week's trip to the beach. When my hair was shorter, I could wash my twists and have them turn out ok and not too tangled, but now that is impossible. If I don't take my twists out while they are still wet, they end up knotted and tangled once they dry and are much harder to remove with out breakage even if I soak them with conditioner.
