latched locks

Additional thoughts on loc maintenance

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Here’s another vlog I did on You Tube answering a few questions I got on how I maintain my locs and the like. Mind you I did this over a couple of weeks ago with the intention of uploading it here once it uploaded to You Tube. Well a combination of forgetfulness…blame it on old age and that I’ve been feeling really blah as of late and well you get the picture. I was just over at Dymanique’s blog to catch up where she blogged about hair loss, then the bell went off…”girl you forgot to post that vlog over here”. lol

 

The Bradelocz Queen shows it can be done

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I’m talking about the Bradelocz Queen that I have mentioned in my first few posts on this blog, Cherie King. She’s on You Tube under several different channels but she has one specifically for natural hair and body stuff and it’s appropriately named Naturalhairandbody.

She posted a vlog showing her milestone of reaching waist length hair. Yes, ladies it can be done. There also is a lady on Nappturality.com who has butt length small locs, though I’m not sure how she started them but she maintains by latching. Gorgeous!!!

Disclaimer: All of the products mentioned in this post have been purchased by me. I have no affiliation with the manufacturer or distributor of the product nor am I being paid to review the product. The opinions set forth in this post are solely my personal opinion.

I’ve reached double digits! 10 months!!

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10 months today y’all!!! Remember when you could officially call yourself a teenager at 13? Well that’s the way I feel about my locs.

Not much change except that the front locs are condensing a lot more now as it’s getting harder to get the front part into a half puff especially while dry. Now that it’s summer I have been washing/rinsing the locs every day. It feels so good to let the cool water run down my head. Here’s a few pics.

Curly Locs

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Hey everyone. I had 2 graduations to attend on last Thursday so I decided to wear the same style I wore to the wedding, remember the curly bangs, puff and french rolled bottom? Yeah that one. I did this out of laziness for 1) I wanted to do a twistout but got lazy at the thought of 2 strand twisting my whole head and 2) it was going to be warmer than it was for the wedding thereby justifying the need to not wear the hair down, but up and getting me out of (you guessed it) 2 strand twisting my whole head. I warned y’all in the beginning I’m really lazy when it comes to styling my hair. lol Anyway, instead of roller setting the puff (mainly ’cause I did not want to sleep on those hard rollers again in which case I got NO sleep whatsoeva) I did a modified bantu knotout. After washing my hair, I just grabbed sections of hair, spraying it with a bit of aloe vera juice ( did’nt have any aloe vera gel) then loosely 2 strand twisted it so that it would be easier to fold/rolled over as if I was putting the hair on a roller and then put a small ouchless band around the base to secure it. I liked this method of curling but I have to remember the next time I do it, to start earlier in the day or the day before and keep the sections small. The right side was done in larger sections that were not quite dry by the next morning when I had to take them down, so the curl is much looser on that side.

I completely forgot to take pictures of the puff (it was a very long day), but I did take pictures of the curls that remained the following day. (Edited to add: this is actually 3 days later. It just dawned on me to look at the date when these were taken). I’m really surprised the curls held up since it was quite humid, more than it was on the day of the wedding. When I was a permie, trying to keep curls in anything above 1% humidity was a complete waste of time. I guess because my puff was so full, my niece-in-law’s aunt thought I had a hair piece on. lol Y’all know I proudly told her “no sweetie, it’s all mine”!

9 Months

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Well it’s time for another update already, 9 months to be exact today. Movin’ on up!!

Not a whole lot of change from month 8 though the back is still puffy & frizzy on the ends, it has calmed down a wee bit and slimmed down some. It’s also taking quite a bit longer to dry after washing or a really good spritzing. Not a problem though…just gotta wash it earlier in the day than I used to earlier in the journey. I’m more in love with my hair than I was before not that I did not love it before, it’s just I’m so amazed by it. Oh, yesterday an older gentleman coming out of the thrift store was walking toward me as I was approaching the store. He called out to me to get my attention and said “I just wanted to tell you that you are very attractive”. Now you know that made a sista feel real good and coming from an older person (as he looked to be around the same age or older than DH who is 17 yrs older than I) who are generally are not too keen on locs. They was blowing & swanging (y’all know there is a difference between swinging & swanging) in the wind as I walked about. lol

Oh I forgot to add that I’ve reduced the amount of baking soda that I use in my shampoo mix from 1 tbs to 1 tsp. Since I don’t use any product in my hair other than a few drops of peppermint, lavender and cedarwood essential oils in my water spritz I don’t have the need to clarify, just clean my hair. I’m also substituting the water part of the mix with aloe vera juice. I mentioned this in the last post.

DH & I attended his 2nd cousin’s wedding & reception today so here are some pics of how I’m wore my locs. I double two strand twisted the front, french rolled the lower portion in the back and then adorned that portion with some decorative pins. I did that ’cause I want my puff to sit up high but those lower locs have condensed the most and are too short to go into the puff. Y’all I had to put in a million and one pins (well that’s a bit of an exaggeration…it was more like 9 pins but still) just for that little portion. The puff portion is held up by another hair tie I made, and was rolled with large rollers to give some lift to the puff since my hair seems to want to lie kinda flat in that back middle area. It was humid today and ended up raining so the puff dropped a bit so I think if I do it again in the future, I’ll use smaller rollers and smaller sections of hair. Plus the smaller ones should be easier to sleep on I hope. The two strand twisted portion held up well probably because I did 4 locs per section ,2 strand twisting 2 locs and then 2 strand twisting those together.

The top that I was wearing, y’all a thrift store find at $5.00 and the black skirt $.50! Who says you can’t look fly on the cheap!!

Aloe Vera Gel/Juice, Peppermint and Cedarwood Essential Oils

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Ok I had this bottle of Aloe Vera Gel that I bought 2 years ago when I first went natural that was about to expire in July in this year. I was using this in the shealoe mixture consisting of shea butter, coconut oil and of course the aloe vera gel. Well now that I’m locking I did not want to risk using that mix in my locs though I still use it as a face and body moisturizer. Anyway, there was oh probably 1/4 left in the bottle that I did not want to go to waste and for those of you that have seen my You Tube videos know I don’t like to waste anything, especially hard earned dollars. So I thought I’d pour the rest of the aloe vera gel in my shampoo mixture since it was almost empty. I then added a bit more Dr. Bronner’s, peppermint & cedarwood essential oils. Wow, you talk about even softer locs after they’ve dried than before for me! Now part of that may also be because it has been raining here at least once a day for the past 3 weeks therefore the humidity in the air has been minimum 70%. But the sheen has been kicked up a notch, even the locs in the back that are doing their thing. I’ve also oiled my scalp only with coconut oil and a couple drops of cedarwood and peppermint EOs each.

Motowngirl has info on a few essential oils so that’s where I got the idea to try the cedarwood and peppermint oils. On another website (click here) mentioned that peppermint oil was for dry hair & helps promote growth. As far as the peppermint I can understand growth but I would not have thought is was for dry hair. However it really does make sense in that the mint family of plants thrive in drier growing conditions. Dry conditions… dry hair, maybe there is a connection. The other reason for trying this combination of essential oils is that I’ve had issues with high blood pressure in the past, so I thought it might be a good idea to look for an alternative. So to clarify (no pun intended), I am no longer using rosemary or sage essential oils in my shampoo mix or spritz.

Aloe Vera, I’ve found in my research is strengthening for the hair, soothing for the scalp, aids in hair growth and has amino acids. One lady on the LongHairForum says uses it as a strengthener since it has protein in it, using it like Aphogee I would assume. I’m gonna try it that way, since that will be a whole lot easier to deal with than henna.

If you use the aromatherapy kind of essential oils that are for external use only, which is probably what you’re getting at the health food store and use them a lot check out this site the http://www.thecatalog.com. I ordered the EOs that I’m using at quite a bit of savings than if I purchased the same ones at the health food store. I was very pleased with how the order arrived.

I got the big bottle of lavender, peppermint & eucalyptus oils and quite a few other oils since I like to make air fresheners out of these in addition to using them for my hair and future concoctions. Here’s an example of the savings. The lavender EO was $47.19 for a 16oz bottle with sales tax (which they did charge for my state by the way at 10 %) is $51.91 and with shipping (if you ordered less than $75.00), grand total $56.91. That means that each ounce, which is the size of the bottles that you purchase at the health food store or GNC is $ 3.56. I don’t know about y’all but where I live even at GNC, I paid $8.79 for that 1 oz bottle. Buy 16 of those and you’ve paid (sit down b4 you read any further ’cause you may have already done this) $140.64 sales tax included. Which is better $56.91 or $140.64 especially if you are purchasing/using the same product/thing whatever on a regular basis?! This is an illustration/reason to have liquid savings aside from your emergency savings to take advantage of things like this and how we unconsciously dribble away our money. But that’s a whole ‘nother post.

Disclaimer: All of the products mentioned in this post have been purchased by me. I have no affiliation with the manufacturer or distributor of the product nor am I being paid to review the product. The opinions set forth in this post are solely my personal opinion.

New Style..sort of

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As I mentioned in an earlier post, I don’t do much styling but I stumbled on this by chance. I’m re tightening right now and was using my homemade hair-tie to hold my hair out of the way while I do my thang. This might be backwards for some but I start at the back of my head and work my way to the front. Well, when I got to the point you see in the pic I got to thinking…shoot this looks kinda cute. SmileyCentral.com Thought I’d better get a pic so when I want to recreate this I’ll have a reference. So here it is with an additional pic of a really sad attempt at basketweaving the part that’s hanging down.

By the way, today is offically my 2 year Nappy-versary!!! SmileyCentral.com

8 months today!

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My locks are 8 months old y’all! The only real changes are they are a bit more frizzier in the areas that moved into the locking process in month 6. The areas that started in month 5 have calmed it’s frizzes down a bit. The front I think will be the last to lock.

I just remembered that I was going to address M*Shawnte’s question on the feel of the lock after re tightening. The 3 & 4 point rotations feel firm whereas the 2 point rotation feels a bit more squishy so I think I’ll (change…yes again) back to the 3 & 4 point. I also experience a bit of bunching like Naturigurl mentioned. It was like the loc was trying to go back through the last rotation done. So I made sure to pull and straighten those out after my weekly wash. Since I’m returning to re tightening my entire head on the 4-4 1/2 week schedule, I should not have to go more than 1 rotation. Unless of course I have a serious growth spurt and I sure won’t complain about that.

Oh and how could I forget the hairballs at the end of 2 of my locs! One is in the front that’s getting a bit annoying because it swings in my face. The other one is in the back that looks like lint on the end. It’s a hairball with a gray hair coil within the hairball. I lovingly refer to it and the other grays in the top as my built in loc jewelry, because my greys are not just grey but they are “metallic silver”. lol

Difference in the 2 point rotation vs 3 or 4 point rotation?

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I was asked by Anthio-Ofo (when you are done here check out her wonderful blog but not b4 you’re done reading here lol) if the 2 point rotation was fuller than the 3 point which she is using. Since I’ve only done this once on about 3/4 in new growth it’s kinda hard to tell visually. I just took a pick of the top of my head and compared it with the last pic I took of the top back in January using the 4 point. I’m pretty sure the January pic was after retightening and 1 wash whereas the left pic is after retightening & 2 washes. In both pics I have spritzed daily. Y’all see any difference?