5 months!

It's difficult to see the changes happening in pictures, but they are getting tighter and tighter. I may make an attempt to sew in some loose hairs, but I m not going to bother until I am out of school in June. 

htshatsHATS!

Child hat $10
Child hat $10
Child hat $10
Elf hat $20
Left-Over yarn hat $15
Fairy hat $15
Easter-egg hat $15
100% wool $15
Cotton-wool beanie $20
Viking hat $20
Boy beanie $15

All hats hand crotchet by yours truly :) if you would like to inquire about one just ask! I need to get them out of my room so I can make more!!!

baby dreads in winter

The cute pigtail hat I made for my baby dreads!

3 months 3 weeks and 6 days

YAYYYYYYY!!!! They are starting to really feel like dreads now. I still have lots of loose stray hairs, but they have either started sticking to surrounding dreads or forming their own baby dreads with no help from me. Since the novelty has now worn off it is pretty easy not to mess with my hair all the time :) 

The few things I do for "maintenance"  (if you can call it that) are: 

-salt water rinses between washes to  keep them from getting oily, (since I only wash them with shampoo once a week) and 

-using hair wraps and beads to keep the huge bumps and loops down, and to get  loose hairs to connect to specific dreads.  (although I am really lazy about this and will probably have very bumpy dreads)

Altogether I am still really happy about starting this process. I no longer waste any time doing my hair on a daily basis and have completely eliminated the "bad hair day" from my life. Since I don't use any products I can always comb out my dreads if I really really want to BUT I think that this may be my favorite hair style ever and I will probably either have no hair or dreads at any point in my life for the rest of my life :) :) :)

The next step is finding cool beads for my hair since I already have an amazing hat collection... 

Two months and one week and one day!

I finally mastered the art of leaving my hair alone! (mostly) I stopped using wax completely! they are not much frizzier and they hold their shape well. They have started sprouting all sorts of loops and bumps as they lock in and get more solid. I love the way the ends curl :)

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…

My baby dreads at a little over twenty days old! (they have only been fully roughed in for about ten days though) 

They are pretty tight from backcombing, but still fall out a bit every time I take a shower just from the water. I use all natural vegan soap that leaves no residue (yuck! no smelly dreads for me) and usually twist them while they are are drying so I can start making the baby hairs stick. When they are fully dry I backcomb some of the areas that seem really loose (usually the ends) and wax them to keep the frizz down.