Protective style - Summer Hat edition

In my household, we have a saying*:

Sun's out, runs out.  

Gotta get some Vitamin D, because Lord knows how seriously deficient we all are on this lovely soggy island. Hair can wait, amirite?

* I may be the only person saying it, but it's a saying that's said. In my household. So it counts.

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This week's protective style:

A simple bun with plaited ends ends plaited/braided and pinned to my head. I smooth my hair down into a ponyail, split the ponytail into 4-5 sections and then plait each section. Then I treat all the plaits as one ponytail, wrap it around its base and pin in down in several places.


 It's been so easy to maintain - I put a scarf over it at night to keep the front smooth (not sleek - that's far too much effort and is often, in my case at least, counter-productive) and spray it with a..well, spray every morning, tie a scarf to stop the curls springing up in raucous joy and celebration and then by the time I take it off at work, I'm sorted. When it gets a little frizzy, I undo the plaits, add a moisturising cream, seal with my aloe-shea butter and plait it back up. I don't detangle when I do that (well, not properly. There's some light incidental detangling, but that's it). I also don't object to getting it wet in the shower (read: dunking my head under the shower faucet at least twice a week).

For the sake of moisture. Clearly.

I don't know when I'm going to unravel this style and deal with the detangling monster but that's a problem for next week really. Future Simple Thing can deal with that.

Right now, I'm more interested in breakfast. Because, you know, priorities.

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Week 1 - In buns

I stretched my hair using Curlformers on Monday and decided to put my hair in buns this week as part of the protective styling part of the challenge.

My first bun this week was my 'usual' bun - I made the ponytail using a Goody banana clip and the tucked the ends under on top with a mini Goody flex barrette.

I know it's hard to see since all my goody tools are black and so is my hair (doi!), so I've included the first blurry picture so you can see the placement of the mini Goody flex barrette since the light reflected off it at that angle there (I never get it on straight, and readjusted straight after this picture, so now it's on the other side).

"This thing? I call her Old Faithful."

A good picture of the banana clip making the ponytail.

Here's a shot from the side.

  After moisturising my hair on Thursday night, I decided to switch it up a little a split my hair into two sections - a top and a bottom. The top section is actually one ponytail split into two extra mini buns.

 This is the best picture of the triangular strucure of the two top mini buns and bottom bun I could take. I'm not sure it was the most flattering on me, but I wanted to be a bit more adventurous with my styling instead of sticking to Old Faithful all the time.

From the front, I simply twisted my fringe/bangs for some interest.

 I've been moisturising every day using the Eden BodyWork Moisturising Souffle (First impression? Me likey), and sealing occasionally with rosehip oil. Sometimes I sprayed aloe vera juice on it too.

As I was moisturising, I notice that my ponytail hung quite comfortably below my shoulders and the sight (despite my premature fairytale ends) made me ridiculously happy, so I decided to snap a pic (or fiften - this is my instagram, okay?) for posterity's sake. I changed my two sections on top into more of a bantu knot to make them easier to pin down and to see if I preferred that look to the two cinnabun-esque sections.

It's been an okay week, but I don't think my hair is holding on to as much moisture as it could because it's loose. After my next wash day, I plan to twist or plait it for the first week, and release it for the texture towards the end of the first week and see if that helps it to retain moisture. Also,  don't think the aloe vera juice by itself is a good idea on dry hair - I might need some water in there too!

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My Mini Twist Maintenance

Mini twist maintenance? What's this, Simple? Did you take your old set out and put in a new set?

Well, no, not exactly....

Actually, not at all. I've still got my old set in.

When I was little, I always used to get braid extensions for 3 months. Worked out at £10 a month for hair styling costs. A proper bargain, though a gross one when you think about it now - my mum was encouraged not to wash them regularly by the hair stylists to prevent the hair slipping out.
When I later encountered ladies who changed their hair every 6 weeks, it seemed positively wasteful to me. You pay how much? How often??
Same with my friends cutting their hair every month or so. Who had that kind of money? Or time?

A common piece of advice in the natural hair scene online is to not put extensions or braids or any
sort of protective style in your hair for more than 4 weeks.

However, I reckon that:

1) My hair flourished in its 3 month changing routine as a child, because it is fine and it was like the ultimate protective challenge.

2) Whenever I take my hair down from a long term protective style, there's always a lot of tangling. Why not just prolong having to deal with the inevitable for just a while longer?

3) I don't have much time in the coming weeks to work out how I'm going to stretch my hair every week and then possibly use a drier and then style and....nah. Just nah. In the ever true, ever wise words of Sweet Brown:

So when I am not taking hair advice and life wisdom from Internet memes, what am I doing to my hair exactly?

Note - Since the weather has gotten hotter and more humid last week, I've cut the whole moisturisation process down to either co-washing or moisturising once a week. But during the miserable Spring beginning, this is what I was doing:

Once or twice a week:

• Moisturise hair with the DIY Interim Hair Milk.
• Moisturise scalp with rose water and aloe vera juice mix. 

At least once every two weeks:

•  Pre-poo with Vatika Oil for an hour (the time varies, depending mainly on how badly I need a shower).
•  Shampoo with some of The Wonder Thing's shampoo.
•  Condition for 3 - 5 minutes (depends on how long I can tolerate doing nothing in the shower for) with one of Ultra Conditioners. I use the Avocado and Shea One if my hair is dry, or between the Coconut or Vanilla Papaya one if my hair needs freshening up.
•  Rinse Conditioner Out.
•  Dry my hair with a T-shirt. I find using a T-shirt instead of a towel minimises the amount of fluff and lint that ends up in my hair, thus reducing future tangles and cursing, but that's it. I have too much frizz for frizz to be a major concern. 
• Moisturise with the DIY Interim Hair Milk
•  Seal with Organix Nourishing Coconut Milk Anti Breakage Serum.

At night, of course, I sleep on my silk satin pillowcase.
I may have to re-introduce ACV rinses for my scalp.

At least every two weeks
I re-twist. Not a whole section, but I just put my fingers at my roots to see which of the twists have grown out the most.

It looks like a lot, but it's only about half an inch.

Here are my (delightfully large) fingers for comparison.

I slowly unravel it, starting from the ends and ending up at the roots. I sometimes have knots at the end - I either work them carefully or if that fails, I pull *ahem* cut them off.

At the roots, you can clearly see where the new growth has tangled a lot. I simply comb the mass with my fingers, with the goal of separating it back into two equal sections.

And re-twist. 

Easy! I don't always detangle the two sections if I don't feel it's necessary - my aim is to retwist whilst minimising manipulation.

I don't retwist the 'safe' or 'secure' way, because when I do, my twists end up all crinkly like this.

Between everything I'm doing at the moment - work, sports, volunteering, housework (bleurk!) I've found that doing what I used to do is working for me the best. Plus, it's massively protective. The results we will have to wait and see in the middle of July when I will finally have time to deal with my hair on a full grown basis.

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