Wash Day Inspired by 22nd Century Natural Woman and the Ladies of Chad

That is a long arse title but writing this up made me feel like this wash day was a long one. 

I promise it wasn't as long as it apparently appears.

I started off by slathering my head in the last of my fenugreek infused coconut oil.

It shouldn't have been the last but I got fed up and made sure it was.

After about an hour, I jumped into the shower with Mane Choice Easy on the Curls Shampoo, making sure to cleanse. Usually I twist or plait my hair but today I decided to bantu knot instead.

There were a few moments of unraveling but I liked it better - it made my hair easier to access for the different steps and I felt I was manipulating it less.

Then I stroked on a DIY deep conditioner  I'd made earlier inspired by 22nd Century Natural Woman's Deep conditioner. (Her channel is here).

I used:

• a tablespoon of shea butter,
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 generous tablespoon of honey
• about 1/4 cup (60ml) of freshly boiled rosemary tea (rosemary leaves + hot water - DONE)
• 2 teaspoons of guar gum.

Experimenting down to my very bones, I started off by throwing everything except the guar gum and rosemary tea in a bowl and smashing them together with my electric whisk.

No dice.

So I just kept adding guar gum and rosemary tea in turn until it all sort of came together and stopped looking like it was on the verge of separation.

My deep conditioner ended up having an interesting moulding dough texture (too much guar gum?)

 but it slid on my hair smoover than a 90s R'n'B love song.

 Aaaaall my liiiiiife....been waiting for someone like yooooou

Bantu knots were the stretch keeper of the day and they were all covered with a plastic cap and then submerged under with an impromptu head wrap before wandering around for a while.

In public or just in my house? You deciiide...

Came back and uncovered everything. I'd expected the DC to have hardened but it was still liquidy and soft.
I rinsed it out easily with warm water and there was some exceptional slip thanks to the guar gum. I bantu knotted again (SERIOUSLY. WHY HAVE I NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE?!) and smothered my hair in a T-shirt to dry/be less wet.

What to do next? Well, I'd seen this video on facebook...



And I thought to myself, yeah, nah, I don't know where to find chébé seeds (a gluten free brand just comes up - okay, okay so I did try to find it - LOL! 😂) but I found the slathering action of the concoction really soothing and reasoned it was just really well protected with heavy protected then braided. I do that anyway without the heavy product. And when it's the first of July, but the coconut oil looks like this:

Solid as a rock!

Then maybe my hair needs a little bit heavy duty protection.

So I left on Alikays Lemongrass leave in, and then added my butterful delight from Almocado - the Twist and Twirl cream. It's a water based butter cream and I think I may be in love. But more on that later.

I went in with the butter on the ends - as in, no subtlety here please, I want - no, need -  to believe it is buttered.

'Cept even MORE generous!

My hair went from this on the ends:

Bare hair

With Alikay Naturals Lemon Grass Leave In

To this.

Aaand finally, with Almocado Twist and Twirl Buttercream!
I choose this area to show the different squiggles on my head too - although it made a significant difference on the right, I don't think it made any on  the left.

And then I braided it. I did have some obvious residue because I've never used so much before (and a little of this stuff normally goes a loooooong way for me) but, like I said, I was inspired by the women of Chad for some extra protection against our British summertime weather™. I popped a scarf on it then bed.

This morning, some of the plaits still had white stuff but by the end of the day, it was all gone.

I'm hoping that the extra butter layer helps with moisture and keeping my ends feeling nourished. We'll see how that goes.

I mean, I'm just like....I better not wake up tomorrow with some crispy hair.

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First flexi-rod set.

Did you guess that I was hiding some lovely lumps under my head wrap?

Sometimes, Queens gots secrets. Sometimes that secret is that you are going out that night, want to actually look good and there's no way in Heck nor Hike that your hair is going to dry in time.

So you improvise.

Now, every time the British queen wears a hat, I'ma be thinking, "Liz, you got curlers under there?"

Snap, Liz, snap. I see you.

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Queenin'

Is..that a headwrap?

Bam.

In bright, bold 'African' fabric? You did it yourself? In 5 minutes?
BAM.

And you wore it all day? Even to work??
And, fear of repetition be acknowledged, KABLAMO!

The thing I learnt was that, whilst wearing a headwrap, you could NOT walk apologetically.

 It won't let you. If you put your head down, with the extra added weight, it's going to go ALLTHUHWAYDOWN. 

So you overcompensate and start lookin' regal and stuffs. Like, "Yes, I would like salt and vinegar - and a bigger kingdom while you're at it, chum. Oh and ketchup too please." 

Queens gotta be polite.

It was AWESOME. And terrifying (draws attention and people reminisce at you about this one time, in Africa..,). Mainly awesome though,

But Simple Thing, why does it look so lumpy though? 

Because it's hiding a purple and not-so-terrible secret...

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Holiday Hair

In the last seven days, I have actually styled my hair more than once!


Last week's wash day resulted in a wash and go, which I happily wore for about 3 days. At night, I'd simply band it in 2 - 3 ponytails to stretch it a little bit...and then dampen it in the morning so it would shrink nicely.
 I would have worn it for a longer period of time but I wanted to have something a little bit..fancy for the holidays.

The whole 'holiday hair' thing.

Spot the renegade, over stretched section.

 So I cowashed on Wednesday, and put my plaits in. 

I twisted the plaits in a flat twist manner to make this quick updo while I went shopping.

 The next day, I took the completely dry plaits out. Egads....

Fluff! Separate a little but fluff until you can fluff no more!

Hallelujah, I had a style! A braid out, if you will, my good  wo)man.

 That night, high on styling success, I used a spray bottle of water, Shea Decadence Mango Lassi Leave in, a tinchy amount of shea butter and some aloe vera gel to set my hair into twists.

My goodness, my hair was not happy. You have to remember, I didn't use a leave in, so I had a bit (a lot) of small s-curl breakage from my furiously undernourished ends. I gave up using the spray bottle about halfway through as it seemed to be causing more shrinkage, and more tangling and more breakage, Bleurgh.

Note to self: Big twists and twist outs are not a protective style for you!

I had three twists on each side, with the roots flat twisted.
I twisted my ends on tiny perm rods and then pinned them up onto the back of my head.

 

 

In the morning, I was not feeling hopeful. Had I been hung by own own petard?!?

I took out the first perm rod and it stubbornly refused to come out, so I was sweating bricks before I'd even properly started.

When I did take it out, I got this:

Why is my hair at odds and right angles to itself??
 The second perm rod also refused to come out. I worked out the trick by the fourth one - unravel the way you put it on. Which would be great, except I'd seemingly used different methods for all of them.

Still not that excited at this point.

 Then I started taking out the twists. When I finished I was dead pleased and chuffed and more than feeling myself a little (please refer to aforementioned gif for estimated levels of mirror preening).

By the end of the day, my hair had started to frizz and lose definition, which confirmed something for me - my fine hair cannot really hold a curl other than its own for that long without frizz. Maintaining it would involve fair too much manipulation.

At night, I simply tied it up in two ponytails and went to bed. Eaaaasy.

Kudos to Hair Bloggers/Vloggers who do tutorials on the regular. You're all as resilient as anything. 

I couldn't do this in the long haul!

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Mini Twists

There are only two things that are officially awful about mini twists - putting them in and taking them out.

I've definitely overcome one of those hurdles.

I'm hoping that it will be a while until the second hurdle. They took me about 5 - 6 days and I did it over a week period, finally finishing this Sunday. In the meanwhile, the loose hair was chunkily twisted and put up into a bun. I worked on the perimeter first, to cover the hair in the middle.

I didn't use any product (that I can remember). And it was fairly easy doing the actual twists - it was overcoming my nausea at how small I thought each one was that was the hardest part! Since I coiled each strand of hair before I twisted them, these are rope twists. But I always do rope twists. I've tried not to and it's actually physically impossible for me to twist fast and not roll and coil each strand beforehand. Maybe that's why the twists are so wriggly and serpentine? I like it though. Looks more voluminous and fun.

Plus, I'm beginning to believe that my scalp exudes glue, not sebum, because my roots are always stuck together.

No, not tangled together. Stuck.

Just a small update anyway. I'm not really sure how long I'll keep them in for, but I'm having a lot of fun already.

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5 Hour Wash Day

It began with some hubris and my Curlformers.

I can't even remember the last time I did a Curlformer set, so when I saw this tutorial, I was going in like a flash. Yes, I would like stretched out curls for my friend's birthday party! And I had a whole day free as well, so the caveat of it taking 3 hours didn't phase me.
I only remembered to pre-treat my hair with coconut oil that morning, so it got half an hour instead of overnight.
I started off with a bentonite clay treatment, which was bad of me - I've been meaning to do a Cassia for a couple of weeks, but didn't want to end up with minuscule pieces of grass in my head whilst meeting new people. So bentonite only it was. I added a bit more water to it than normal, to make it easier to rinse out, as well as  my usual splash of apple cider vinegar

Using less water meant my hair wasn't as weighed down, but it still had the same effect as normal. I always love the results of my bentonite clay treatments, because they're always the same - happy, bouncy hair, with pretty defined coils.

After rinsing out the bentonite, my hair felt so yummy, I considered skipping conditioning. Then I realised that this was crazy talk, conditioned as normal (leaving conditioner on for 5 minutes) and the skipped out the shower.

Once out, I applied aloe vera juice to my hair, and then split it up into sections, in preparation for the curlformer business. Smaller sections = easier to handle. I deliberately made myself choose smaller sections, and on those sections, I applied some Shea butter mix and Eco Styler Olive Oil gel. 

I knew I didn't have enough Curlformers for my entire head (I hoped...), but because my sections were so small, they dried faster than normal and initially still came out silky smooth when I took the Curlformers off that section to use elsewhere. I used rosewater in my spray bottle to refresh the parts of my hair that had dried whilst waiting. 

I started all these shennanigans (from the pre-poo) at 10 in the morning. 

By half 3 in the afternoon, I was done. 

5 hours??

It was all pink on the left and all orange on the right.
I need to be more strategic where I use my curlformers - in some parts, my hair has already outgrown them!

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 Becase of my haphazard placement of the curlformers, I couldn't stretch them in the same manner as naptural85 does in her video, so I gently pulled the curls to one side, for a regal pinned up kind of look.

I only have one picture because by the time I was ready, it was time to go! I over applied the gel in some areas, so I got flakes *sigh*

I find that Curlformers only ever last me one day. I'll have to work out a way to make them work for me for longer.

But despite the loss of the curls, I didn't want to let the awesome stretch go. So I started mini twists the next day (Saturday), trying to do at least 2 for each curl section. Today is the third day, and I'm barely halfway through >.< However, my hair still feels so moisturised from the aloe vera juice and shea butter from Saturday! Win!

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Homely and I know it...

After my wash day last week, I again put my hair in twists - at least, like I'd tried to do the week prior. I was going to add some Curlformers to the end, for a twist and curlformer set but I decided to leave it as they are and just wear them in a ponytail.

Wearing chunky twists isn't exactly a la mode from all the tutorials I've seen. Which is kind of funny, seeing how practical and easy they are.

That probably explains the lack of tutorials on them then...

 I think reading other people's blogs and experiences can be really helpful - I got the idea to wear my stretch style out of the house from Shelli (who is also doing the same thing coincidentally).

However, I'm probably going to leave it until my next wash day instead of when I have time to style it again. .

My horizons of what's possible and what I find acceptable for me are being gently nudged and I like it.

I was still surprised when I got complimented on it though!

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