Saturday 6 September 2008

In Love Again


Wow what a difference 4 days and a re-tightening can make. I know in my last post I said I wasn’t feeling my hair and after reading other blogs I know that sometimes it can happen. But at the mo I LOVE my hair. I hope the bad days will be few and far between, if at all.

I started re-tightening my hair on Mon and I finished y’day. I don’t know how many hours it took me to complete, I think on my next one I will count the hours but I know it was plenty. On Weds I did approx 9 hours. I’ve heard other ppl say they can do it in a day and Creyole can do it in 2.5 hours! When I read that I was like WOW. It takes my consultant 2 hours to do my hair and I thought she was fast. But 2.5 to self re-tighten, blew me away. I hope I get quicker and can do it maximum a day. Cos at the mo I need to set aside a week to do it and its just too much time. But as my old piano teacher used to say “practice makes perfect”. I was surprised that it needed doing already as it was only 3 weeks since it was last done and my consultant does it every 6 weeks so that is what I had stuck to. I don’t know if it was growth or slippage or a combination of both. I have read other blogs and I know that some do it every 4 weeks so I may try that, as 3 weeks its just too soon, my arms need chance to recover lol. The pics below were taken just after i finished re-tightening my locs.







Part of the way through re-tightening the front

When I was re-tightening there was a few problem areas. One lock on the hairline in the front was damaged but was holding on. My point of view is that there is not point in keeping it there so I pulled of the damaged end and started the loc again with what was left. For some reason I just couldn’t get the hair in the SL pattern so in the end I gave up and just plaited it. One of my locs I noticed has loose hair in the middle of the loc, don’t know how that happened.


I’ve also combined two sets of locs and you can see in the pics. In the first one it was at the back, as you can see one was really skinny and it kept coming out of the pattern so I joined it with a fatter loc next to it.


The other ones I think they were two locs I had joined when I first learnt to re-tighten and had to cut strands as I couldn’t separate them. They were two skinny locs but if you look at the end it was very fat. I didn’t like the way they were soo skinny so I joined them together. You should be able to make out the join at the root. When the joint bit of loc gets longer I will cut the two ends off and leave one loc. I do not know if it has messed up my partings but its done now and I prefer it this way.



I was reading Creyole’s blog (I hope she doesn’t mind me mentioning her. Hopefully not at it’s nothing she hasn’t already posted), and she was talking about the bunching she had experienced. I was like that it so my hair, and it made me feel better. I know it will get better with time & my locs will start to behave. It’s all about the journey and patience. I know ppl do braid outs and curl their hair to try and control the frizziness/bunching, so will try more of that. I do have soft spikes but I’ve noticed on the last few times I’ve used them my hair hasn’t set fully and sometimes still damp even though I’ve left it in over night. The first time I did it, it was fine so I don’t know why its not working this time when I’ve done nothing different. I think I will invest in a hood dryer. I was also looking at getting some heated rollers, still thinking about that. First time I tried a braid out I wasn’t that keen on it. I used to do Bantu knots but for some reason the knots won’t stay in now, so I just give up and put the soft spikes in. I want something quick which is why I was thinking of heated rollers. Actually this morning I was up early for church and I was thinking about it. I still have my curling iron from when I creamy cracked (9 yrs ago), so I kinda tried to style it using that. It took me way back, I r’ber them days. Didn’t have the curls but it added body. I’ve actually got my hair in soft spikes at the mo so I hope they dry over night.


Hope you enjoy the pics.

Til next time, be blessed and know that God loves you






6 comments:

Anonymous said...

GREAT JOB!!! I'm still working towards completing my entire head myself....

You did a wonderful job! I too was in awe when I read Creyole could do her whole head in 2.5 hours...WOAH!!

V @ Locks-N-Motion said...

Your hair looks great!

Khandi said...

Thank you both

Cashana said...

Your hair is coming along nicely. To give you perspective, I was recently taught to retighten and I was well on my way to giving up. I married some locks and my arms would get tired. However, the first time I retightened a quarter of one side of my hair it took 4 hours, when I retightened before my appt, it took two hours. So believe practice makes perfect.

naturalnicky said...

More power to you sista for trying to re-tighten yourself. You did a great job. My locks are new and I've only re-tightened once. My consultant took 2.5hrs to retighten. I have thought about taking the re-tightening class but I think I'll just use that 2.5hrs as some me time to read or look at a movie. I have a set of almost 2 year old twins so I get very little me time. Looking forward to more of your posts.

Vixen said...

I just recently took the retightening class in July and have retightened on my own hair once. It is a daunting task but very rewarding when you finish!!

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