My babies are a day short of a month old!
(Just more about me taking care of them…)
I have continued doing a lot of reading about what sort of care is recommended for dreadlocks and I stumbled upon a really great site called dreadlocktruth.com
They are a community of people that exist to offer advice on dreadlocks and have enlightened me about the use of wax. They had a lot of information about the ways wax can make your dreads very unhappy by doing things like causing mold and letting pieces of lint and foreign matter get stuck in them.
YUCK needless to say I no longer put any wax in my dreads although I would have to add that my initial backcombing would have been a disaster without it. My hair is very soft and fine and did not hold the backcombing without the wax, but I washed it out completely after I was finished. I would say that it is not bad to use a minimal amount of wax in the first stage of backcombing to make sure you can get them in tightly, but be very sure to wash it out afterwards with a lot of hot water and hair dryers. (They explain how on their site) I used small amounts of natural beeswax and did not notice any problems with it, and had no issue getting it all out. It helped the comb actually grab my hair and definitely let me knot it tighter. My dreads did loosen after I got it out, but they did not fall out completely the way they did before. Again, I would only recommend using it in the initial backcombing and making sure you are using something natural that you can get out easily and completely afterward.
I have also decided to tie off some of my dreads with tiny hemp wraps (that I may cut out later) to try and keep them from combining and help them hold better towards the top. The body of all of them is nice and tight but the few inches from the root some get seriously crazy. There are a lot of stray hairs that fell out of some and I will tie those in as well. I’m going to try and train them into shape gently… so at the very least I can spend some time worrying about something other then my dreads. They definitely need time to mature, and all my obsessing can’t be helping. I will post a picture after I get them organized and ready for their vacation from me.
My poor dreads have everything they need except time away from me poking at them J I swear for the next month I will only wash and un-flatten them I really, really will…
