Thursday 3 February 2011

The living room

Wednesday the 2nd of February
Honey treatment day. Time to prove I actually do learn? I did The Ankylosaurus for 2 hours on the bottom half with a handful of El Vital anti breakage before microwaving some honey and dumping it in the bottle for the rest of he conditioner. I find honey is pretty good at washing with actually. If I don’t use too much of it, it seems to boost the cleaning-ability of regular conditioners.
Honey contains enzymes that will bleach your hair slightly. When honey is diluted and in contact with oxygen, it will form hydrogen peroxide. The enzymes can be broken trough heating. Simply microwave the honey in short burst at high effect until it has bubbled up a few times. Unless of course, you do want the slightly bleaching effect. I don’t though.

On a semi-related note, I signed up for a gym today and I’m waiting for my member card. Hubby and I have gained weight steadily since we met each other and I’m tired of feeling flabby and unattractive. I’m up 5 kg since we met. Of course this isn’t a whole lot, but I’m built to be skinny and I don’t carry the extra weight well. I wonder if it will affect my hair growing. The extra circulation is naturally beneficial for growing hair and in general anything that is “traditionally healthy” for you is also good for your hair. Somehow I find it easier to find motivation in “Its good for your hair!” than in “Moderate exercise will decrease the statistical risk of respiratory infections and diabetes 2”. Heh.

Sunday the 30th of January
Ick. Grease central. WOed thoroughly but my scalp stayed mad at me.
I really should use the The Ankylosaurus more often. I need to make my peace with the fact that the two ends of my hair want completely different treatment.
The top half is perfectly fine with a quick coat of cones once in a while and turns over conditioned and cranky with too much oil or protein. The bottom half seems to suck up just about anything I can throw at it. It feels perfectly fine and healthy, but will still eat up anything I condition it with. The Ankylosaurus is definitely the way to go.

Saturday the 29th of January
You have to love when you can just be lazy… I kept my oily-greasy hair pinned up in different buns for 4 days and no one noticed anything. That’s a thorough oil-soak!
When I took it down again, the tips were almost dry.
Today was cholesterol day, which is something my hair absolutely loves. Unfortunately it’s hard to find good cholesterol treatments in a country where that fine, volume-challenged Scandinavian hair is so dominant. My current cholesterol treatment is something I found in Holland when I was visiting curly-haired friend some months ago. I brought home several tubs!
I mixed up two big scoops of ultra-cholesterol conditioning mask with two egg yolks and a bottle of Barnängen conditioner and stuck it all up in The SexySmurf for two hours. I rinsed, thought I was done and hopped out of the shower. But as soon as I took the towel out, it was obvious the conditioning had been too heavy for the top. Apparently I don’t like to learn and can’t remember a week back when I had the same problem? Sheesh. I guess I got too carried away with adding the egg yolk now that it previously worked so well.
Unfortunately it was too late in the evening and I couldn’t be bothered to try to fix it. Ick.

Wednesday the 26th of January
Olive oil day. I did a rather heavy oiling, braided it and pinned it up in a Nautilus bun. It was almost dripping when I put it up but in the evening it felt “dry” enough to sleep on it like normal.

Sunday the 23rd of January
Ow crap. My scalp became greasy and itchy during the day. The heavy mix from yesterday was definitely too much for it. The length was perfectly happy though. I guess this is a sure sign that your hair is long when the ends react completely different than the rest.
I did a very, very thorough WO wash with lots of massaging and comb-scratching of the scalp and an ACV dip. It cleared it up 99% but I can almost hear the scalp growling at me: Don’t you dare do that again….

Saturday the 22nd of January
Washed with El Vital total repair 5 mixed with an egg yolk and a tablespoon of cholesterol treatment in it for a moisture deep treatment. Hair felt awesomely smooth and shiny!

Thursday the 20th of January
Kept coconut oil in my hair for two days. When I opened the braid again, it was pretty clear that the ends have absorbed more oil than higher up. Not really a surprise, but it gives me renewed reasoning to baby it so I can get out of the damn classic to knee-desert!

Its 1 am as I type this, so it was technically for yesterday I wash with a coloured hair conditioner as according to schedule. This time I used El Vital colour vive.

My Flexies arrived today! It was impossible to get a good picture of them in the artificial light, but here goes
Top left:
Roman style cross with stone-set in antique brass in XXL. Very impressed by this one! Even hubby with his Y-chromosome could see it was awesome and remarked “It looks really antique!” So happy I went with this one.
Top right:
Filigree dragonfly with chunky etched beads in XXL. This will one will make a great contrast to my golden tones
Middle left:
Native inspired filigree with jade heart beadwork in XXL. Very pretty too.
Middle right: Lovely circle stone-set in emerald green with matching bead in XL for comparison. The XXLs are making the XL look wimpy!
Bottom row:
Intricate soaring butterfly with purple-iris metallic beads in L. They made one of them a left-handed version! Hooray! The picture does absolutely no justice to the details and the beads with their deep purple colour with the metallic shine.


Saving this link for future use. Webshop.
They have wheat germ oil and walnut oil which both contain ceramides. Also they carry thistle oil which I tried once and my hair seemed to happily drink up. I have wanted to try that again but haven’t found it anywhere until now.

Friday January 14th, 2011
I tried something new last night: I slept on one of my silk scarfs. We have this awesome couch that’s really good for sleeping on and I covered the upper 1/3rd of it with a silk scarf big enough to go under the mattress.
It went alright. I woke myself up twice when I moved, before I really fell asleep. “Ah! Weird slippery stuff!!” Yes, I have a weird aversion to silk. Yes, it’s really, really weird. I know.

I think this might work. By now I really don’t think I have a chance of getting used to silk pillow cases. Tried that too many times and it didn’t work for me. Silk just creep me out. I like my bed linen to be cotton.
Sleeping in my regular cotton linen and normal pillow case but covering the top part of the bed with silk might work. It won’t decrease as much damage as a silk pillowcase would, but it should take some of it. It should allow my braid(s) to slide easier and be less affected of me rolling over it.

I need further experimentation. Maybe I could fix something like this for the bed: 1 meter wide “strips” of silk that are being secured under the mattress.
But I wonder what hubby would say?

Thursday the 13th of January Yesterday I tried something new: Egg yolks!
I have seen them being mentioned as a conditioning treatment a few times and since yesterday was a protein conditioner-day, I decided to try it. Instead of putting it in alone, I separated two egg yolks (The whites will go in an omelette today) and mixed them with some Tresseme leftovers. Left it under cling wrap and two warm hats for 1½ hour (Resisted the habit of adding a heat pack!) and rinsed with lukewarm water.
Hair feels good. Soft, smooth, happy and easy to manage. It was no miracle cure, but my hair didn’t get mad at me either, so I consider it a success.

According to
Wikipedia, a large egg yolk contains 2.7 g protein and 210 mg cholesterol. My hair absolutely loves cholesterol, but I wonder how much a normal cholesterol treatment contains compared to an egg? 210 mg is not a lot (To put it lightly) but I have no idea how much a cholesterol conditioner contains. Now that I think of it, I don’t know how much protein a conditioner normally contains either. Hm

Today is a Morocco Method thicken date, so I have the scissors out. I have snipped a couple of small splits and one nasty, long “eye”.

My Flexies shipped a few days ago. Now I just have to wait. Sigh! I already found a loving home with our resident mermaid for my old XLs

I’m itching to order camellia oil again. I left my own bottle with my mom since she is always hunting for shine for her greying hair. I wonder if she uses it at all? :ponder: Also seriously considering the silk beanies I mentioned in the previous entry. And some more scarves from coveryourhair.com. Ah, temptation all around me…

Sunday the 9th of January
I have the cold from hell. My nose keeps running so badly I ended up stuffing cotton up my nostrils to catch a break from the constant having to blow it. I think by now, my poor abused nose is glow-in-the-dark red. I’m sore tired and cranky and everything makes me irritated.

I was supposed to do a cassia 4-in-one treatment yesterday, but just the thought of having to get out of the water again makes me feel cold. A warm bath in general would be wonderful, but I know I’ll get cold getting out again and drying myself off. I’ll just sit here and stink in my favourite hoodie instead.

I ordered new Flexies:
Intricate soaring butterfly with purple-iris metallic beads in L and two of them. I asked for them to reverse one of them to a left-handed version. Not sure if they will make that or not, but it’s not super important

Someone also posted a link for silk stuff for hair (Sorry lost track of whom) and I’m itching for
these beanies.
They would be great to have under a hat or scarf!

I keep thinking about the silk pillowcases on the same website. Silk or satin pillowcases are one of those things I really should do for my hair. It might help my temple hair grow in better and it would definitely help me decrease breakage, especially since I’m a restless (side) sleeper.
Unfortunately I have tried silk and satin to sleep on and under before and I don’t like it at all. It’s too cold, too slippery and just feels “wrong”. The last set of satin bed sheets I bought I ended up giving to my mother to make costumes out of for her 6th graders play
After years of trying, I still can’t get used to it. I only like cotton for linen. Of course knowing this doesn’t stop me from being an idiot and thinking “Maybe if…”

Friday the 7th of January
Been S&Ding on the Morocco Method dates. Did an ACV rinse a few days ago.

I was supposed to wash/condition on Wednesday according to my plan, but my mind was completely rebelling again and I “forgot it”. Clearly I don’t like the highly schematised hair-care! I want my haircare to be stress free and easy, thankyouverymuch! Instead of skipping it, I forced myself to deep condition today. I used Barnängen crème for normal hair. I bought 3 different conditioners from that line and was very impressed by them so far.

I’m considering writing down my washing/conditioning routine.


 
Monday the 3rd of January
From today and until Wednesday is Morocco Method lengthen days so I have my beautiful scissor laid out near the laptop to remind myself to look through the ends.
I don’t go through a huge, complicated S&D session usually when I S&D. I simply look over my braid and tassel in front of the computer and often find a handful to snip. I have a theory that because a split end takes up more volume than a regular one, it will pop out of a braid on its own. Just like you can sort uneven sized material by size by simply shaking it in a container and the bigger pieces will “float” up to the surface because of the bigger volume.

Saturday the 1st I was supposed to have done a grape seed oil treatment. I didn’t have any grape seed oil at hand though, so instead I did a deep conditioning with Elvital Total Repair 5. I can’t seem to make my mind up if I like that one or not. It does seem to condition well and makes my hair that little bit irritated it always becomes when I do a good, deep conditioning. But it also seems to build up around my scalp and irritate the skin slightly.

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