Silly little random find share of the day

Totally cute, but will definitely not work for my hair length!

My hubby is awesome!

I can’t always figure out how hubby feels about my hair obsession and my blogging. I know he likes my hair very much but I think he finds it slightly weird that I never shampoo and that I spend a lot of time searching for information and new tools and toys.

I think his opinion on the whole blog can be summed up with what he said the first time he learned about it: “You write about your hair? And you have people reading about your hair?”. Mildly confused amusement indeed.

He takes my pictures without complaining and some times comes up to me when I’m writing and asks me what I’m writing about. But when it comes to me replying or when I start a conversation about my latest obsession, I always had a feeling he was just keeping a polite smile on top of his mildly confused, mildly uninterested amusement.

Well, today my darling hubby proved that he actually does pay attention and does care!

Look what was among our packages:

     

Slight delay of plans

I had planned to take some god length shots of my hair to celebrate the ten years ”birthday” but my dedicated photographer is currently propped up in bed with my heat packs and all the covers I could find.

Poor hubby!

He is really, really sick and pathetic. I hope he will feel better soon so he won’t have to celebrate Christmas in bed with a bowlful of soup instead of the delicious food I’m going to prepare.

Happy ten years “birthday” to my hair

It's 2 in the morning right now, so it’s officially my hairs 10 years "birthday". 10 years since I shaved my head!

Time flies!

Hah, if someone had told me those ten years ago that I would end up growing to knee length hair, I would have laughed.

Funny how things goes.

Back then I just wanted to get rid of the crappy lemon damage and try something new. Then I wanted to grow it long enough to go in a ponytail…Then into a braid…Then into a bun…Then into a knotty bun…Then into a braided Nautilus.

It sneaks up on you, the hair.

  

       

Right now I’m more interested in the Christmas preparations. Hubby is off at work and I would like to have finished some of it before he comes home so we can enjoy a relaxing and stress free Christmas.

I’m giving my hair a new comb and some argan oil for its “birthday” and Christmas.

Live and learn

I have been encouraged by people to do a YouTube channel for many years but have been hesitant to do it for a number of reasons

• I personally don’t care much for the video format when it comes to leaning new hairstyles. I prefer photo tutorials and will skip embedded videos when I read blogs or forums.
• The hair channels seems to be crawling with disgusting hair fetishists and I have no desire to cater to a crowd that routinely steal mine and other longhairs pictures and posts them as their own (Some even put a © on stolen images. Seriously.)
• There are so plenty of good channels (A million bad ones too) so I would have very little to “offer” anyways.
• YouTube comments are where brains go to die.
• Maybe my biggest argument is that it seems there is a world of difference in the reactions between photos and videos. On picture tutorials you will see a vast majority of positive reactions although you will always have the occasional “I don’t get it?!1” on a crystal clear how-to. Even when someone posts pictures of horribly abused hair, people have the heart to post encouraging comments and helpful hints. Videos? OMG the criticism! Viewers even act like you should be appreciative they took the time to post how much they hated the videos.

Since most people seemed to have been perfectly happy with my pictures and picture tutorials, what the [bleep] was I thinking staring a YouTube channel?

I just wanted to prove my philosophy that long hair is easy and versatile is true and that knee length hair really isn’t that much work or trouble.

I thought by disabling ratings and comments on the video, people would get the hint that I wasn’t interested in criticism. In the last work I put in on the video I thought of mentioning in the long braiding sequence (That I didn’t speed up because I wanted to show exactly how long/short it takes to braid my knee length hair) that I didn’t want comments or criticism. I changed my mind because it felt “provocative” to order people around like that. I decided to put in the text about how uncomfortable it makes me feel to be watched and felt it would explain that I’m insecure about the whole thing.

Guess that was a humongous fail to assume people would get that?

So based on the criticism I received in the blog comments and on my email, I should change… Everything. That’s right; my first attempt of a video was such a horrendous eyesore that there is nothing likeable about it.

(I especially “enjoyed” the complaints about Bloggers comment feature. Because that is something I can change, right? That’s Bloggers issue and I can’t do a damn thing about it.)

So yea, apologies to the sweet people who encouraged me and who genuinely just wanted to see me handle my hair, but I think this will be my first and last video.

Speaking of sweetness I have this one to mail today. I had planned on getting something from one of the little specialty chocolate stores in the city and figured if I was out early, I wouldn’t be trampled by the Christmas-stressed crowd. Well, it turned out that everyone else had the very same idea?! Wow. Seriously, they need to find a way to weaponise those vicious old ladies with their strollers. Ow.

First real video

I love my friends :) (And I complain too much?)

Biologist friend is in America to celebrate Christmas with her family. She just emailed me asking if I wanted her to bring some hair products home for me. Uhm, let me think; Yes. Yes please.

I’m deducting three things from this:

1)      My friends are awesome

2)      My friends know me too well

3)      I complain too much about the lack of selection in hair products here
        

Shock, awe and a recommendation

I’ve been hunting for argan oil for some weeks now. The magical oil that seems to be the biggest hype among my fellow longhairs at the moment.

The main problem has been the price. Even mixed products with just a small amount of argan oil is ridiculously expensive. Well, of course “ridiculously expensive” is very subjective, but being a long haired weirdo has made me really aware of prices. Why would I use a 200 kroner conditioner when a 20 kroner one is just as perfectly good at making my hair glossy and soft?

The argan oil prices make me cringe.

I’ve been searching the net for a few weeks both on Swedish and international sites and came to the conclusion than 50 ml goes for around 200 kroner. That’s 244 Swedish kronor, 35 USD and 27 Euro.

Today I looked at a Danish online health shop called Duft og Natur that I have ordered from a lot in the past. I really like that shop. They have good prices and have been effective and friendly to me. Of course now that I live in Sweden, I have a problem with shipping from them since they don’t ship outside of Denmark. Pout.

I poked around a bit and had one of those moment where you feel you should have a sound effect in the background with screeching tired and glass shattering.

They have an organic argan oil for 99,75 kroner. For 100 ml!!

I could barely believe my eyes. That’s a quarter the price of the other products I have considered ordering! I ended up calling the place and asked if it really was a pure product and got confirmed that yes, that is in fact a pure argan oil… 100 ml for 99,75 kroner!
That’s 121 Swedish kronor, 17,5 USD and 13,4 Euro.

Is it just me or is that really, really cheap?

I ordered 3 bottles.

Yep, 3.
   

                               

I’m now anxiously awaiting the package to arrive at my parents’ home in Denmark so they can send it to me
So consider this a hot recommendation to everyone reading this; All Danes and everyone who knows a Dane who could send it to them! At this price, even with shipping it would be cheaper than the vast majority of options out there.

Ropebraid

When I took the Nautilus bun out yesterday the rope braid was still looking pretty good. Guess I finally got the hang of that one.

Today’s hair

Rope braided Nautilus bun.

I’m really not on friendly terms with the ropebraid. I feel I can never get it “packed” as tightly and firmly as I want my braids to be and it doesn’t have the same stabilising feel as a regular braid put up has.

I think the end result looks fairly nice although I’ll admit I shamelessly took the picture from the best angle and side!

Now I just need to keep myself from messing around with it.
Do… Not…Touch…The…Updo!!

  

Shampooed

I went to bed last night with super greasy hair. Decided I just couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it.

I woke up to something really upsetting. Those who are members at UTT can read about it here.

After things had been “solved” I headed for the shower to clean the grease ball. It felt like such a huge task to clean the disgusting mess with conditioner only!

  

So for the first time this year, I reached for a bottle of shampoo.

   

I went with Franck Provost because it looked cone free. I’ll admit I’m not an ingredient expert, but what I could see it didn’t contain any.

I figured using a cone free shampoo followed with a heavy deep treatment would work well.

  

  

My hair felt awful after the shampoo! Dry, cranky and tangly.

It made me realise why they put cones in shampoo and wonder how I could shampoo my hair 2-3 times a week and think it felt good!

   

  

Then I mixed up a treatment using some leftovers: Garnier Respons with avocado oil and shea butter (Far right) and Elvital volume collagen

  

   

And filling up with a bit of Franck Provost expert repair conditioner. Left it in a Sexysmurf for about two hours.

   

My hair felt really good afterwards, but I’ll have to keep an eye on my scalp to see how it reacts!

The comb search goes on

It’s been a week since I emailed Creative combs about their failure of a website and inability to ship an order. They haven’t responded at all, so I’m going to order combs from the place that Forgetful recommended: Hairsense.

Even though my intension was to order combs, I find myself tempted by

A massage brush. Would this be useful for washing maybe?

And the natural bristle brushes. I never owned a real quality brush and the natural bristle brushes always seem to be highly praised.

I like the looks of this handle rake, but it's really big. Almost the size of my Ric the Combmaker comb that feels huge, almost unmanageable.

This one is slightly smaller and looks more handy.

And this super detangle rake is even larger than the Ric-comb! It looks like it could be a useful one for shower-purposes and distributing conditioners.

This handle rake and this detangler would be useful as a comb for putting my hair up.

This one would maybe work well to be used in the shower for distributing conditioner. Or would it be too wide-toothed to work at all? Does anyone have experience with the super wide-toothed combs? I think I’ll put a thread up on UTT asking for experiences…

Well, that didn’t go as planned…

My scalp continues to be flaky and irritating. I must admit I don’t entirely understand it: It’s been so rainy and wet outside for weeks that even with the heat cranked up inside, the moisture should still seep in, right? My scalp shouldn’t be suffering from a dry climate, should it? It’s not that cold outside either, yet.

I don’t get it.

Anyways. I thought I was clever last night: Instead of CO washing to get the damned flakes off; I decided to do a scritching. That seems to be the most commonly used term for manipulating the dry scalp to loosen up scalp gunk. So using my fingertips, comb, brush, fingernails and this “octopus” massage thingie I cleaned my scalp of the flakes before brushing them out of the length.

I felt really clever.

Today my scalp is intensely greasy. Yep. Figures: The long manipulation yesterday really stimulated it to release sebum. So now I can either make peace with being a total greaseball, or I can do the wash I was hoping to avoid.

Touché, scalp.
     

I love getting mail :)

Seriously, receiving a package in the mail feels like getting a visit from this guy:

 

 

Doesn’t matter much what the package actually contains ^^ Still feels like Christmas

  

Well, my mailbox today contained this

  

The secret item will remain secret because it’s going to someone I know reads my blog and I don’t want to ruin the surprise!

    

   

The little box on the right contains a bunch of the cards shown in the front and the red thingie is a stamper thing with “Betald”- the Swedish word for “paid” that I figured we could use for bills XD

   

    

I love the cards with the beautiful design made by the very talented Madison!

   

    

Had to stick one of the stickers on the first best thing XD

  

  

I’m pissed off at the crappy job they did with the pens. On the website with their design tool it showed the design being wrapped entirely around the pen and taking up all the white area. In real life though… Bleargh! 

Snugly warm winter head of the day

I had a bunch of errands to run and it’s cold, wet and windy outside so I needed to keep my head warm.

   

  

Hair up in a braided nautilus

Then I put a pre-tied bandanna over it

I intended it only as an extra layer, but it turned out to be really great for keeping the hat from sliding back or budging in the whipping wind. I see the point of an underscarf for a hat!

Even though this blue one is the beanie I feel fit over my head and bun the best, it still looks really weird. I guess normal hats just aren’t meant to conceal a cantaloupe-sized bun? Hah

It does get better once I get a coat and my headphones on though

I kept warm and comfortable so I will definitely do this again!  

Testing

Apologies for the very lame upload, but since it’s my first try with creating videos and uploading them to Youtube, I thought I would give it a very simple test run to get used to how things work.

Hair happiness graph

A rather random and geeky little thing I made yesterday while chatting with Little Orca.

Not entirely sure how much explanation it requires but…

• I liked the short hair on me. 5 o clock shadow to eyebrow length looked really good. It still took some product and shampooing every night, but it was a good-looking length.
• Then it started to lie down in weird patches and falling into my eyes, nose and mouth and it required constant gelling or headbands to not drive me insane. Argh!
• Once it hit flip length and was long enough to be whipped up in a ponytail and I could easily get it out of my face, my happiness with it kept increasing.
• Then I hit about mid thigh and outgrew my reach. Huge drop in happiness that I didn’t see coming at all! It made my handling so much more difficult and I had to adapt to it.
• My conclusion on outgrowing “Reach Length” was that it doesn’t matter if my hair is 2 cm or 20 cm longer than I can reach; it makes all handling and care a lot more difficult. But now that I have gotten used to it, my happiness with my hair is slowly increasing again.

(I guess I should include a small “jump” now that I’ve reached the illusive knee length. Classic to knee has been really slow and frustrating)

    

Tuesday very early morning

Just had a total girly hour with mud mask, wax, eyelash dye and some fun with the hot pink dye I got from Umphie. I put a bit of coconut oil in my hair yesterday and just let the leftovers rinse out. It feels soft and nice too.

I placed the order at vistaprint for business cards with my blog address and a few other things some days ago. I’m extremely unimpressed with the company and the ordering process and wont be ordering with them ever again no matter how well the result turns out. I have a strong dislike for hidden fees and feeling lied to. Of course they make it sound so easy in the ads but in reality, you have to pay extra for anything and everything. It even cost extra to use your own design! Why, I can’t figure out. I know I’m not in the printing business, but I can’t see why my own design would be more difficult or costly to print than the ones you just fill contact information in. It has to be the same number of colours/ink you use and you have to re-set the entire thing after each print, right? Weird. I probably won’t receive them until after Christmas: I was so fed up with the hidden fees upon hidden fees upon hidden fees that I opted for the cheapest processing and shipping. Bah, they can kiss my behind.

I have been trying to make videos for my new youtube channel, but can’t figure it out. I “shoot” the video just fine, but when I try to edit it in windows movie maker the entire video is black/blank even though it plays perfectly fine anywhere else. It’s very strange and super frustrating! Of course there is no help to find anywhere online, argh.

I’m going to place an order with the place that Julya recommended, Creative hair tools:

This one

And this one

And this one too even though they don’t write how large it is. It looks like the kind of wide toothed comb I want, but it could be very, very small. Well, if it is, it will go in my shoulder bag. I could use having a good comb with me.

Also going to order the argan oil they have on the site.

Edit: Well, Creative hair tools turned out to be a big fat fail. When I’m checking out, I get the message:

"You Spent Over $50. Click Here for Free Shipping.

This shipping method is currently unavailable. If you would like to ship using this shipping method, please contact us."

But I can’t pick free shipping and I can’t pick any other option at all. I have no problem in paying for shipping but I do have a big problem with irritating and useless websites.
I sent them an email even though I honestly don’t feel like bothering and would rather order from another place now.

Today I feel like Goldilocks

Hubby and I were going to a Christmas dinner with some friends. I wanted to do something cool to my hair instead of the usual braided Nautilus bun held with a Flexi that it’s always in. So I decided on a figure 8 bun held with one of my cooler hair sticks.

So, it went up in a figure 8 bun and I stuck a Timberstone Turnings stick I got from Hypnotica in. It is so big it kept either poking me in the neck or poking up like a giant weird antenna. Hm.

  

   

I decided against it and put in a hair sword I got from Fatamorganna. That one kept poking me in the neck too and it’s pretty sharp! I angled it more after taking the picture and then it wasn’t Hubby-safe anymore. He has the memory of a moth circling a flame when it comes to remembering I have sharp things in my hair!

  

   

I liked the idea of a hairsword though and took a wooden one I also got from Hypnotica. That felt more right. It’s not any sharper than a hairstick so the poking in my neck was tolerable and it was relatively Hubby-safe too.

  

  

But after taking the picture, I tried adjusting it a little and…

*Crack*

Dammit.

   

  

Okay. Sigh. In went that Flexi that I had tried to avoid.

   

  

And finally, a woollen hat over to protect my hair and scalp from the sun, wind and cold.

   

Soft city

I’ve been slightly unhappy with my ends for a while. Even though I haven’t been able to spot any actual damage, they have kept feeling a bit Velcro-ish no matter how much I S&D. I’ve been looking forward to a real actual trim!
  

But now that my hair is almost dry in a braid, my ends feels awesome, great, and fantastically soft!

   

I have never been a fan of Respons because of the distinct and lingering scent of honey, but the mix of the regular conditioner and a bit of the deep treatment with avocado oil sure worked wonders on my ends! Wow. I need to remember this!

SexySmurf II

I find myself a bit pressed for time tonight. I want to do a deep conditioning but I have to run a test creation of a traditional Danish desert. Hubby and I are meeting with some of my friends on Saturday for a Christmas dinner-thing and I want to bring a Danish Christmas desert called Risalamande. It’s a very tricky thing to make; If done right it’s a deliciously smooth and creamy “fluffy” mousse kind of desert, if done wrong it turns into a lumpy, heavy and much too sweet porridge. A lot of Danes will say they don’t like the desert at all because they have only experienced the lumpy, sweet and heavy kind.   

My mother is really good at making it right, but her recipe is of the “A bit of this, a dash of that, a splash of this” kind and that makes it completely useless to me. Some research into more modern variations and methods to create this desert and now I just need to test make it to see how it works.

 
But all this kitchen work is too much to do a deep conditioning during. Although my SexySmurf is good at keeping me comfortable while I do something else during a deep conditioning, it’s not completely tension headache-proof. After all, like I proved before, it’s a lot of weight piled up on your skull!
  

I had the idea some time ago to use an elastic bandage to keep it all under control and it works quite well. Wrap the bandage around the head and up over the “bun” to keep it squished down. I need a bit of work on the “pattern” though

    

     

No matter how practical this one is, I always think that that SexySmurf is the very definition of “totally unsexy"!

100 things to try with your hair before you die

(A lot of these have a certain “rite of passage” status among longhairs!)
Edit: Added Rita’s, Teufelchen's and Mandy's awesome entries to the list!   

1. Accidentally whacking someone in the face with your braid
2. Accidentally whacking yourself in the face with your braid
3. Arguing that you’re definitely not a product junkie. No, you’re not!
4. Avoiding severe sunburn on your scalp by wearing a scarf (And then feeling smugness the next day than no one else was as clever as you)
5. Being asked how much money you spend on shampoo (With the pre-set assumption that it is a lot)
6. Being asked how much time your spend on your hair (With the pre-set assumption that it is a lot)
7. Being called selfish, because you don't show the beauty of your hair and "hiding" it in a bun instead
8. Being really, really tempted by a crazy colour or cut, but deciding against it because you like your hair just the way it is
9. Being told that cutting your hair makes it grow faster
10. Being told that you are too fat/tall/short/skinny/pale/tan or in general have the wrong shape or face for the length of hair you have
11. Being told that you are too old for the length of hair you have
12. Biting back a snarky reply to “How do you wash it?” or something similar
13. Biting your lip not to laugh at how long other people take to do their hair in the morning
14. Building a failsafe routine that you can always return to if things go wrong
15. Checking out at the supermarket with more hair products than actual food in your cart
16. Discovering the wonder of S&D
17. Doing something completely weird to promote hair growth or health. Then later think back to it and wonder what the hell you were thinking?
18. Enable someone with a great product
19. Experience an amusing hair-mishap and sharing it on your favourite forum
20. Experiencing someone making a mean comment about you being selfish and not “thinking about the poor children with cancer who needs a LoL wig made from your hair” and not losing your cool or sinking to their level
21. Experiencing someone making a mean comment about your long hair and not losing your cool or sinking to their level
22. Feeling a deep satisfaction that you made the most you could out of your hair!
23. Feeling trendy because the IT-thing in hair at the time is whatever messy thing you happen to have whipped your hair up in that day
24. Finding an oil your hair really loves
25. Finding hair in the weirdest, most inappropriate body parts and thinking "How the hell did it get there?"
26. Finding someone who will cut your hair exactly the way you want and nothing more
27. Getting your hair caught under your significant other
28. Growing your hair longer than you actually like and then decide “Nah, I like it better when it’s just a bit shorter”
29. Hair-typing people around you in a bored moment
30. Having been too eager with an awesome new treatment and pissing your hair off
31. Having the ends of your hair tickle a certain body part and think [insert name of that bug you hate here]!
32. Having your hair pulled by your armpit
33. Having your hair pulled by your elbow
34. Having your hair pulled by your knee
35. Having your love-making interrupted by “Ow! My hair!”
36. Having your pet play with your hair
37. Holding something completely non hair-related in your hands and thinking “Hm, maybe I could use this in my hair somehow?”
38. Impressing someone by whipping your hair up in a bun in 37 seconds flat
39. Inspiring someone else to buy the exact same hair tool as you
40. Inspiring someone else to grow their hair
41. Letting your hair go completely and entirely greasy from its natural sebum
42. Looking back at old hairstyles and laugh
43. Making someone actually want to eat your hair because of the delicious-smelling treatment you made
44. Making someone think you cut your hair while it’s in reality hidden safely under a wig or updo
45. Making someone think you made some sort of delicious food when you cook up a new hair treatment in the kitchen
46. Matching your entire outfit to whatever tool you’re wearing in your hair that day
47. Overhearing a sweet and spontaneous comment about your hair from a child
48. Owning a cute scarf or tichel that you can hide even the messiest hair-day under
49. Owning a piece of hair jewellery that costs more than your entire outfit
50. Owning a wig, a wig piece or a funky-coloured clip in
51. Perfecting a single up do that you can always do no matter what
52. Picking the meatiest meal on the menu and then arguing “My hair needs protein!”
53. Picking up a food item from the kitchen and taking it into the bathroom to spoil your hair with
54. Reaching your length goal and going “Hm, maybe just a little longer…?”
55. Realising that sometimes, mean comments really do come from jealousy
56. Realizing that your bun makes for a good shock absorber
57. Realising you outgrew someone you considered a hair idol
58. Receiving a mean comment for your hair and giving a snappy comeback
59. Regretting a cut
60. Rinsing your hair with diluted ACV
61. Rinsing your hair with some strange brew with fruit juice or tea or the like
62. Rolling your eyes at an advertisement when you know hair doesn’t actually work that way
63. Rolling your eyes at hair advice when you know hair doesn’t actually work that way
64. Rolling your eyes at someone using the term “dead ends”
65. Rolling your eyes at someone who just doesn’t understand that having short hair is just not the same as having long hair you can put up
66. Seeing the cashier/customer service at the store give you funny looks when they see you with several bottles of conditioner but no shampoo to match
67. Seen flat-ironed and hair sprayed hair up close and knowing it’s really not pretty or healthy at all
68. Sharing a sweet comment someone made about your hair with the people on your favourite forum
69. Squealing in delight over a brand new hair toy
70. Tickling your significant other with your hair
71. Trying CO
72. Trying WO
73. Using the argument “It’s for my hair!” and getting it your way!
74. Using the argument “It’s for my hair!” in any way
75. Waking up in the middle of the night and realizing that your hair is caught under something. You then tell your SO to get off your hair and then you realize it's actually caught under your back instead
76. Waking up in the middle of the night and thinking that the soft, furry thing caught between the mattress and the headboard is a dead rodent when it is actually your hair
77. Washing with an herb
78. Wearing braided pigtails just because you can. And no, you’re not too old!      

Hmm, I’m quite a few short here. Any help, guys?

Cut my hair!

Behind the irritating and attention seeking title is that fact that today I trimmed the little patch in the back of my neck. My hairline is pretty asymmetrical and my hair grows a lot further down the neck in the left than the right side. That silly little patch is even much curlier than the rest of my near-straight hair and always forms this little squiggly curl. It grows a lot slower than the rest of my hair too!   
   

It was super irritating because it means the little bit of hair would always end up either sagging or pulling. I started cutting it many years ago and was really worried I would regret it, but I never have. Since it grows so slow, I only have to take the scissors to it a couple of times a year too.

    

I always end up cutting it when I have that “Argh, I have a bug crawling on my neck!!1!11!!” freak-out. It’s always followed by the “People around you staring at you like you’re an idiot and wondering why you were hysterically swatting at your own neck”-experience.
Urgh.

   

There really aren’t a lot of hairs in that little patch

  

  

Not even enough to do a decent silent movie-villain beard
 

  

Would it have worked if I had used my scissor as a monocle? Mmm, quite!

Beanie idea

I brought my laptop down today while waiting for the laundry. Although you don’t have to watch it constantly, the machines never seem to be able to keep the times they show. So today as usual, my machine #2 was showing “1 minute left” for 11 minutes straight. Good thing I bought my laptop!

I took the chance to sort some pictures in my hair folders.

     

I have been following this thread on UTT about hair friendly winter hats and been super envious of all the awesome hats and knitting skills. I have never found a hat that will cover my bun and head without sliding backwards at the forehead and bunching up at the neck. Some longhairs seem to be happy with a caliometry which is a beanie without the back, so a bun pokes out. Me, I definitely want to cover all my hair to protect it from wind and cold!

    

As I wrote before in my blog I want to learn to knit, but knitting alone wouldn’t be enough to create the hair hat I want. I would want silken lining on the inside as well. 

    

Anyways, when I was down at the laundry room I got an idea for the “ultimate” bun covering beanie. 

I used a picture of me taken from the side as reference. And suddenly understood why my beanies always slide back! Look how huge my bun is compared to my head?! No wonder I will have to learn to knit to get a hat that fits… 

    

Pardon the drawing quality, but I used what I had at hand which was a big marker, probably left over by a child. (Our laundry room is a study in weirdness BTW! I always look forward to see what bizarre things are left there. This week it was a mix of gardening and car magazines. Last week there were lots of children’s toys and of course there was the month where the laundry room had been transformed into a fundamentalist Christian library. Weird.) Oh and pardon the rather embarrassing spelling error! 

     

Anyways. My idea was this:

• An inner layer of cotton with silk around the bun and at the fragile hairs at the temples. My experience with silk tells me that a full layer of silk will only result in irritating slipping, so I would want to reduce it to the more fragile/old parts. 
• A roll of stuffing between the bun and head to disguise the bun-bump and offer extra insulation.
• Two elastics stitched around the insulation-roll to stabilise the entire hat and keep it from sliding. Around the forehead for stability, either a wide elastic for distributing the tension or simply a regular headband. Some people experience headaches from the pressure of headbands, so maybe a drawstring would be a good idea. Would probably be a good idea anyways so the hat could be fitted for any head size. 
• A knitted surface.

         

       

Now that I see my drawings and design based on my head and bun shape, I really understand why my regular U shaped beanies always slip and irritate me. A specialised hair beanie really needs a distinct asymmetric shape!

Annoyed over something stupid

I received a link from a friend today that I had been recently quoted on LHC for having taught a member something. So what is the problem? 
    

That said member makes it sound like it was something I believe in, when I really don’t. I might have explained the reasoning why some people do this, but I have also posted several times how I don’t believe in the effect.
     
So yea, I believe the reason behind some people swearing by the final cold rinse is to “close the hairs’ cuticles that have been opened by the warm water” but I don’t believe it has any real effect since following that logic, it would mean the cuticles would re-open again as soon as the hair heats up to room temperature again, right?
    
Save yourself the cold water torture and go for an ACV rinse instead.
    
Oh and just to be completely clear, this Igor is a former member of LHC. She was kicked out for being horribly evil and “spreading misery”. Thankyouverymuch.

A question about shedding

I would really like to read about if you have had any major shedding and what you did to make it stop. 
  
Yes, I have experienced shedding. I actually lost 1-2 cm circumference of my hair after a very sneaky shed. Without going into details, I had one of those periods in my life where it felt like “Oh great, what else can go wrong?!” was seen as a challenge to see how much it really took to break me. I was incredibly stressed and it was followed with a long period of deep depression that has taken me years to get out of.

I didn’t notice it until way later, but I must have shedded a little extra each day. You wouldn’t notice 5-10 extra hairs under normal circumstances and especially not when you’re so stressed out you can’t even sleep without taking pills or so depressed that taking a shower seems like too much work because it requires having the energy to dry yourself off and braid your hair afterwards. 

It wasn’t until 1-2 years after when I was plagued by the regrowth that was long enough to get in my face but too short to go safely up in a bun or braid that I realised I had gone through a shed. It didn’t take much thought to add two and two to why that happened.

 So, yes I experienced a bad shed, but I didn’t realise it until after it had stopped on its own again. I can’t really tell what to do to make it stop since it stopped on its own. The fact is though, that I’m in a completely different place in my life than I was then. 

  
But I have two thoughts on unwanted shedding:

• Get a blood test.
• Look into stress-coping.

  
Getting a blood test is the best place to start. If not for anything else, at least to give yourself the peace of mind to know it isn’t a sudden illness or deficiency you’re experiencing. Of course some doctors can be unwilling to take a blood test on a “healthy” individual and they can be quite condescending when it comes to “silly” things like hair loss. I have experienced enough doctors in my life to know the threads on doctors brushing off concerns about hair loss with a condescending “That’s normal” are completely true and frequent. After all, with “normal” shedding being between 50-200 hairs a day, how can you even tell someone you don’t know at all that their shedding is normal, even when the owner of the scalp swear they’re experiencing a drastic increase?

So what should you do? Lie. It’s that simple. Tell your doctor that a relative have been diagnosed with a deficiency and it makes you worried you might have it too because you feel you have experienced some of the same “symptoms”, could he/she draw a routine blood test to give you peace of mind? It will require a bit of research, but only a truly arrogant ass of a doctor would be able to brush off a “real” concern that can be put to rest with such a simple step.

  

Even if your increased shedding isn’t caused by stress, it is a highly stressful experience. You may even start to feel stressed over the shedding itself. And no, it doesn’t make you a horribly vain person to worry about that. Anyone who dares to judge you over your very real, physical concern isn’t worth your time.

As for handling stress, there are many good sources for information from people who are trained in dealing with this and have degrees that are relevant.

  

I can share what I found have helped me though…

Make a minimum list of things you need to do for the day. Be realistic! Cross out things as you have finished them and start with the easiest one to encourage yourself. Life can seem a lot easier when you have your to-do’s on a list instead of rummaging around in your skull.

Make your sleep a priority. During sleep is the time where your brain restarts, your body repairs itself and it will give you the mental and physical means to deal with a stressful day. Air out your bedroom before sleep; change your bed sheets frequently and to something a little more luxurious. Make sure to set enough time in your schedule to get the 8 or so hours you need. If you have trouble dosing off, don’t be afraid to look for aid in herbal supplements or prescription pills. We have all experienced how a full, satisfying night of sleep can make the entire world a different place.

Make food and nutrition a priority too. No living off fast food and sugary snacks no matter how much easier it is! You need real solid and healthy food without sugar crashes to give your body and mind the energy they need.

Take at least 15 minutes each day to put your feet up, relax and not worry about anything. Set an alarm if you need to help you focus on relaxing! Put on a facemask or paint your toenails, drink half a glass of wine and read a Cosmo. Take it as a mental break and don’t feel guilty for it. Take it as a priority to make yourself relax and spend some time to make yourself look good in the process too; it will make you feel better and more confident. Under eye bags and dull skin never helped anything and if taking care of this will help you relax and unwind in the process, it’s just an extra plus. I think the one thing that really broke me down in the stressful period was that I didn’t have a place where I could just put my feet up, relax and prioritise myself. You need to create a space for yourself for that.

  

Those reading this will have noticed that I haven’t actually mentioned any “hair solutions”. Well, there is a reason for that. I truly believe that if you’re experiencing a bad shed, you need to look for a mental or physical reason. As it has been said many times, hair is actually very far down the body’s pecking order and your hair will suffer when something else is wrong. Bad sheds aren’t something that will be fixed with massage, pomegranate juice, kelp diets or what have you. They might mask the symptoms and reduce the shedding for a while, but they will not cure what is really wrong and what is really causing the shed. You need to address that and either fix it or learn to deal with it in some way. The shedding will eventually be reduced or go back to normal when you do.

 

But never forget you can always find people who will listen and truly care on hair forums.