Weave Really got to Stretch it Out...

When packing in a slight rush to move to a foreign country, there are things you may leave behind.

Unimportant things, such as your sewing machine; those pair of jeans with the hole; toothpaste.

But today, I realized I'd left behind something mega important.

My CURLFORMERS.

It's winter! Rain, and thus tangles, will surely be upon me. How will I survive without stretching?

 What to do? 

Eotteoke?!

Ah, but look what I did remember to pack.

Weave thread somehow managed to find itself into my bag, despite the fact the first (and last) time I had a weave, I was not even legally old enough to do a paper round. Whatdaheck?!

Anyway, having stumbled across this very informative video by the lovely Nadia of GirlsLoveYourCurls, I may give African Threading a whirl this winter.

Granted, the last time I had this style done, I was too young to consent to the actions being taken upon my person, so my mum did it in looped arches over my head that had the other kids calling me spidey-head.

Nowadays, they'd be calling me innovative! 

I actually took my twists out on Friday. I'd started on Thursday night and hoped it would take me till Friday afternoon to take them all out, but nope, I didn't finish till 10pm on Friday night. So I just bunned it and left it like that.

On Saturday morning, I quickly mixed up some bentonite clay mixed with some ACV and water and slathered my head in it. I ended up leaving it in for an hour, because my housemate got to the bathroom before me >.<

When I finally got in the shower, I rinsed it all out quite easily and then conditioned. 

I tried my best to leave it on for longer than three minutes, but there's only so long a girl can scrub her elbows for.

Rinsed that out, put in my homemade moisturiser, and then decided to thread my hair to stretch it.

It took me nearly two hours to do my head, but that's because the technique takes a while to get down, and I was wrapping quite tightly. 

Also, on some of the sections, I would be nearly to the end, check the mirror and realise that I hadn't secured it tightly enough at the root and the thread had slipped, so I'd have to undo it and start again.

I used about 5- 6 foot (up to 180cm) of string for each section and on some of them, I ran out.

But the stretch was pretty awesome. Instant hairnorexia cure.

 

Taking them out was ridiculously easy. Seconds per section. Really. However, it was only a couple of house (6 hours, I think?) so my hair wasn't completely dry, but it was on it's way there.

The roots were still a bit big, because I didn't secure them all very well, so I just threw my hair into a bun. But then I remembered buns don't always work for me, so I split it into two buns. Then each bun I split into two sections and fat-twisted each sections. 

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Needs Vs Want

Me: Can I ask you a question? 

Wonder: Yeah, course. 

Me: Do you think £194 is too much to pay for a hair dryer? 

Housemate from next room: No!! / Wonder: What?! 

Me: Actually, it's in dollars. So it'd only be about £120... 

Wonder: .... You're kidding. What does the site say when you convert it to pounds? 

Me: I didn't say I was going to buy it! It's just...research. 

Wonder: You can't be serious. I've seen you walk half a mile to save 30p and now you want to splash out on a £200 hairdryer?!  

Housemate from next room: You get what you pay for!

Me: Like an investment? 

Wonder: I have a hairdryer! You can just use mine (We have already seen evidence of his friend's love of hair tools, so I guess this admission was inevitable. Didn't make it any less funny). 

Me: Well, does it have *reading from the site* 3 heat settings, a cool shot and tourmaline crystals? And ions? 

Wonder Thing: .....it blows hot hair like a hair dryer should -_- 

Me:  Ion deficiency is really bad. A hairdryer needs 'em! Ions are important!

Housemate from next room: Very important! 

Oh, looks like I got ions and iron confused. My bad.

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Back to Basics

For some reason, the hectic nature of the past couple of months life wise seem to have meant that I've completely forgotten everything I started researching when I decided to have my hair the way it is.

For some reason, the one week of summer we had back in May or sometime prompted me to leave behind my beloved Tresemmé Naturals conditioner in favour of Giovanni's Direct Leave In and a protein conditioner without much slip that smells like cherries [yes, I'm that easy to sway].

Last week Tuesday, having to cope with a more tangling than usual, I decided to de-tangle before rinsing my hair, since I was trying to minimise shrinking. To aid me in this task, I pulled out the old Tresemme Naturals and saturated my hair and welcomed the slip.

Y'know, slip, that element of conditioners that allows combs and fingers and shed hairs to easily pass past each other?

It's one of the first things newbies seem to be told by people on the boards when it comes to de-tangling as well as never to de-tangle hair with a comb/brush when dry.

It's something that's so basic that...I'd just forgotten about it completely in the past couple of months.

Slip, oh, how I've missed you.

My hair couldn't tangle if it had wanted to. My hands slipped through my hair like it used to, back in the day when I cared about this stuff. I could've cried with joy, except I had places to go and things to do, you know. I left it in for a while, before rinsing it out well, and sealing with a shea butter mix, another thing that I hadn't done in aaaaaaages.

My hair felt delicious.

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Bye Bye Bobby Pins!

I decided that the facade was no longer as shiny as it once was and that it was time to get rid of them once and for all...

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