My Hair is a Sponge

So another day in the land of locks and I'm easing on down the yellow-brick road, like the Wiz. No complaints. In 38 days it will be my one year loc-aversary and I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do with myself...but that's all the way in Emerald City for now, so I have some time to sit in the poppy fields and figure that one out.

Why the Wizard of Oz references? (Screaming) Because I look like a mother freaking scarecrow! (Awkward pause) That's why!!! (Throws empty beer bottle against wall) Damnit!

I'm sooo joking, lol. Just in a rambling mood today. But onto business. I haven't been moisturizing my hair like I should, henceforth, the scarecrow reference and the handy and very dandy, wool-knit hair net I am wearing today. (I know, I know...'foo on you, NaturallyMe...you should be moisturizing your head!') I'll be honest. My days have been a toss up between being really really busy with work and running errands or really really lazy at home. So last night, right before bed, I made a weak attempt to fix the problem. I smoothed some oil into my hair real quick (knowing good and well that won't do a thing for my hair, except give it sheen) and tied a scarf on.

Which leads me to my next little blurb. My hair is a sponge and unless I moisturize with a thick hair cream or cowash (which for me means, wash with conditioner), oil does absolutely nothing for me, except give me a temporary shine. I think I've been fooling myself for some time, thinking that all I need is more oil and more oil. When truth is, if I don't wash or moisturize with a cream first, it doesn't matter. Before I locked up, my hair would get so dry sometimes it would sound like a crackling fireplace. HEY! You know what? Maybe the scarecrow reference WAS right on. (Straw is a kind of sponge.)

Oil alone works for some people. The "oil and go" crowd, so to speak. But not for me. The longer I wear locks, the more I realize that the hair on my head has the same personality as I do. It's different (not like anybody else), it means well, but it will not conform at all. Sometimes, I wish it would but I'm sure there are people out there that wish that I would conform too. When I wore it in a perm, it broke the permed hair in a subtle way, continually pushing through. There was no mistaking my hair texture. The more I tried to cover it up, the thicker and stronger it became until I had no choice but to let it be.

Since I'm talking about what kind of hair I have, I might as well mention that I looked up Andre Walker's hair types to see what category I fall under a couple weeks ago. I didn't post about it because when I saw that there were only 4 choices that I would be picking from (Straight, wavy, curly and kinky) it was a no brainer. I have thick, nappy hair. Um, no kidding...thanks Andre. But I added the site here and there are a bunch of links to different products (good for kinky hair) at the bottom of the page. I'm not much of a product junky, but I like the names...curly custard and whipped pudding. Makes me hungry, mmm. lol

To tell you the truth, I like the LOIS system, because it shows you how to look at your hair and find out it's exact pattern. I haven't done this yet, but I plan on doing it sometime soon. So check it out if you haven't already tried it.

And for good measure, I will give you the recipe to my little hair concoction that's in the spray bottle these days.

What you'll need:

1 8 oz. spray pump bottle (of course)

1 cup pantene relaxed and natural conditioner (looove how this smells)

1/8 cup olive oil

1 tbs glycerin oil

Mix ingredients, pour (or funnel) into the container. Spray and go. Coat with oil afterwards for shine or to lock in the moisture (if your hair is anything like mine).

That about it! Now, ease on down ease on down the roooad!

Hanging in there

Hello all! I know I haven't posted in a while...I've been caught up in some mess. "But I'm heah"

Anywho...I must admit to you, I have not been keeping up with my lil' regimens like I should. Thank God for my homemade satin pillow, though. 'Cause due to my schedule lately, a sistah's been hitting the sheets without a head wrap. I created a little oil spray for myself in order to moisturize my hair in the mornings. It's a mixture of jojoba oil and olive oil with water. Have I used it? Sometimes. It's hard to evenly distribute it throughout my hair, though, because the 8 oz. bottle I use is more like a squirt bottle than a spray bottle.

Yeah, yeah, I know...excuses are the tools of the incompetent.

My hair has been kind of dry lately, so yesterday, on a whim I poured some castor oil into the palm of my hands and ran it through my hair (which is something I generally do with olive oil, but I wasn't really paying attention.) It was thicker than I expected and I had to dilute it with some water, which I quickly splashed through my little twists. After this, I sprayed my homemade cleansing concoction through my hair and voila! My hair was the happiest person in the world. (And yes, my hair is a person, because she has her own personality). I let my newly springy, moisturized twists air dry and carried on with my day. Today, my hair is so soft and fragrant. I woke up this morning and it had practically styled itself. Good stuff!

This coming week, I plan on washing my hair. I would say on average, I've been washing it once a week, if that. Maybe more like once every week and a half. I always do the deep conditioning before or after the wash. The twists still unravel big time when I step under the shower (which is unimaginably annoying) but I grit my teeth and grab my locking gel. It's a price I'll pay for this journey.

Random Observation
A couple weeks ago at work, I asked a coworker how many locks he had. Of course he had no clue, so I got to work counting them for him. 106. Now I already knew that I had 140. After going on a website that said every lock should be thicker than a pencil, I felt kind of bad. But that's the thing about the internet, kids. You have to remember not to believe everything you hear. About a hundred pictures later (while looking on a bulletin entitled, "what's your loc count?"on nappturality.com) I saw that there were women with lock counts of 120, 160 and sometimes even 200. Actually, most of the women had higher lock counts than me. After that, I got back to my senses and remembered all of the work I've put in thus far to even consider throwing it all away because of something silly.

So there it is folks! I'll post up some pictures after I retwist my newly washed hair.

Peace unto you all! :-)

A New Day

You see that look on my face? That's me after just washing my hair. It looked and felt like I washed every single twist off of my head. In the picture, I look like I'm wearing a little afro with some twists shooting out here and there. Needless to say, I had a lot of work to do that night.








As for the process, here goes. I have been going to my usual websites. Nappturality.com and just recently Motowngirl.com. Grrreeat website!!! It gives you recipes for homemade concoctions that are great for natural hair. The only problem with this website is that you cannot copy and paste the information, nor can you print the page. I painstakingly typed each hair recipe onto Word and printed it from there so that I could have access to the information at home. The ingredients in these hair recipes are a little strange to me, though. For example the use of honey. Who would think to put honey in their hair...on purpose? Anyways, I'll give you an example of what I did when I washed my hair just recently.

I shampood my hair with a conditioner. Before I did this, I used a recipe off of the Motowngirl website for conditioning. It's called the honey/olive oil conditioner. Basically, you mix 3 teaspoons of honey and one fourth cup of olive oil together and massage it all over your hair. You then cover your head with something (I used a plastic bag) and leave it in for a half hour. Next, you wash it out and voila! Now, I'm not going to lie to you. The concoction was sticky. I did not like putting it into my hair, either. The oil did it's thing...you know, smoothed out the honey a little bit. But there's so much it could do. I felt VERY uncomfortable, gooping that stuff onto my head. And spent a good period of time wondering if everything was going to stick to my hair from that point on. (It didn't)

After the "not quite a shampoo-shampoo," I used something called an apple cider vinegar rinse. This is like a clarifier. It's a mixture of one to two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and two cups distilled water. You pour it over your head after you shampoo and it completes the hair cleansing process. Now I wasn't all that much impressed with the final result. That's not to say that the recipes that I tried didn't do their jobs, just that I didn't get the earth shattering results that I anticipated. My hair felt a little funny. Like clean, but not very soft. In fact, it wasn't even oily from the olive oil. Nothing, nada!

I got to work retwisting, using the ORS hair locking gel (with some olive oil in it). Clipped on the hair clippy things and blew dry my hair. Unfortunately, I was too tired to take pictures right after (and I had to go to work at 4 in the morning). But here's one I took a day later. Kind of hard to make out my hair, but here goes...

So that was my hair washing adventure. I will be washing my hair more often now that the grace period is up and I'm hoping to be able to see the benefits of these homemade conditioners and clarifiers.

Okay, now for one of the more interesting concoctions that I made this morning. I used the recipe for MotownGirl's Homemade Spritz with my own little additions. I had to buy some essential oils (which are not easy to come by and not very cheap either.) I purchased them from a Whole Foods Store.

The things that you see in this picture are castor oil, vegetable glycerin, jojoba oil, lavender oil, rosemary oil, tea tree oil and peppermint oil. And boy those essential oils are strong! For the Homemade Spritz, I used water, my pantene conditioner, olive oil and some tea tree oil (which I added for kicks-and the 4 little droplets that I used gave the whole concoction a different scent). I put everything into an 8 oz. spray bottle, shook it up and sprayed my hair.

It was then and there, in my bathroom, that I heard my hair let out a deep sigh! My hair literally said, "aaaah."

It felt softer and my twists were springier. My hair smells terrific. The funny thing is that it's not oily at all, just soft. I absolutely love this stuff. I will be using it everyday. Two thumbs up.

I also mixed water and 4 drops peppermint oil to make MotownGirl's Scalp Energizer. I poured this into an 8 oz. spray bottle. A few sprays of that to the head and it stimulates the scalp (which stimulates hair growth). I didn't really feel the tingly sensation that I expected, but I love the smell of peppermint. My boyfriend was calling me Peppermint Patty today. I think he liked the way it smelled too. So two thumbs up for that recipe.

That's me looking like I'm going to blow my brains out with the homemade hair spray.

Well that's the journey this week. I can't wait to mix up more recipes with the rest of my ingredients. If you want to try this stuff too, here's the place to go...

http://www.motowngirl.com/

...happy experimenting!