I have a cold

I have a really bad cold so I’m staying in my pyjamas and feeling sorry for myself. Whenever I’m sick, I never wear my contact lenses so today is glasses-day.

My head was feeling seriously cold so I put a pre-tied bandanna on. The bandanna presses my ears into the glasses and my skull so it quickly started making me feel sore and irritated.

I tried simply having my glasses on top of the bandanna, but that slides down within minutes. Then

I came up with this:

The headband is perfect for keeping the glasses in place and now my head is warm and comfy!

Braided nautilus tutorial

When it comes to hold and stability, this is my superstar bun! Even without a tool inserted in the bun, it takes some jumping around or shaking my head to unravel this one, and even then it only does it gradually and hesitantly.

Start with your hair in a braid. French, Dutch, English, doesn’t matter.

Wrap the braid up in a loop. The size depends on how thick or long your hair is. As in: How much room you need inside the loop. Don’t make the loop too small as you need “wiggle room” for a hair stick or clip too. For some it might work to wrap the outer loop around the wrist or a couple of fingers.

Twist the braid around the base of the loop. I alternate hands to hold the loop in place while I twist the braid around with the other hand.

Tuck the braid tassel under the inner twists.

Insert Flexi 8, hair stick, Ficcare or whatever you want to hold the bun through the inner parts.

Done!

One thing I really like about this bun is that it “displays” the thickest parts of your braid and tucks the skinnier bits inside where people don’t notice them. Hehe…

Except for the time it takes to make the braid, this has got to be the quickest bun I know of.

My (gym) go-to

It’s no secret that my favourite up do is the braided Nautilus bun.

Hypnotica has instructions here for a non-braided version:

I have put it on my to do-list to make a tutorial for my adaptation so I wont go into detail here.

The nautilus bun in itself is almost self stabilising and the braided version is even more so because the “bumps” of a braid offers more slipping-resistance. Even without securing the bun with anything, I would have to jump up and down several times to shake the bun loose and even then, it does so hesitantly and gradually. Once it’s been set in place with a toy, it won’t budge. Also, the bun in itself is very flat and hugs your skull which is very convenient and helps prevents headaches. It’s perfect for the gym!

I prefer to secure it with a Flexi 8.

Stumpy

And this is how you easily do a heavy overnight oiling: Braid, smother hair in oil, put in a plastic bag and bandage it up.

But look how sad and short my hair looks covered in the bandage! It makes me want to go “Aww…” for being injured and pet it XD

(Is it bad that’s 3 pm and I’m still in my “pyjamas”?) 

The one where Igor gets tired of the Friends-style blog titles

Today I revisited an old friend I haven’t seen in a couple of years: The knotty bun

It took me a couple of try to get the technique right. Where to start, how to twist, how to stick it.

I guess it depends on your taste, but I don’t like the “knot” to be underneath the tail, so I start twisting at 12 o clock. I twist clockwise and coil clockwise too.

Other than just remembering the tactics, the only art in the Knotty bun in my opinion is how to stick it. You need to find the place where the tail crosses itself at the start of the “bun” (!)  Then insert one stick between the two tail-parts (1) Tilt the stick to push the top part of the tail towards your head to pack the “bun” closer to your head for more comfort (2) Then push the stick through the hair like usual (3)

I don’t know why I haven’t worn this one more often. It’s surprisingly comfortable and very good at keeping my hair out of the way, even with a past waist length ponytail hanging free. Maybe it’s the half-bun shape that provides enough shape and “lift” to keep it free from my shoulders and from getting tangled in everything?

(And it totally tickles my ego in the right way that even with a half bun, my hair is still the longest I spotted all day)

It made me very aware of my hair-habits though: I can feel it on my shoulders so I automatically do a little “shrug” when I sit down, but there isn’t enough length to get it caught under my butt.

Hubby really liked it and asked why I don’t ear it more often.

The one where Igor is really happy

When I first started this blog, I didn’t expect a lot. My first and only priority was to “free” it from LHC and in general stand on its own.
But even then, it was quite a surprise to come from the heavy trafficked LHC to more humble page views.
After all, in the end the only credit I had to give LHC was that you got a whole lot of page views on anything and everything you wrote no matter the quality!

I still think it was a good experience for me personally though. Every once in a while every one of us needs a good slice of humble pie.

Now that I have gotten used to that my blog is still on the upstart, it made it so much more special and dear to me to find this:

So a big Thank You to the sweet Gossamer or Gossycraft for the mention and the very, very sweet words!!

The one where Igor’s hubby catch on

Hubby has a cold so I made him a pot of camomile tea with honey in.

Hubby: Oh, yum, camomile tea! Hey, I didn’t know we had any? … Wait, don’t tell me: It’s in the hair-cupboard with all the other food stuff you reserve for your hair, right?

Clever man.

Hair weight and headaches

I think everyone with over BSL hair have heard comments on hair weight and headaches:  

“Wow, your hair must be so heavy!”

“Don’t you get headaches with all that hair?”

Uhm, no. But thanks for not being able to keep such an unintelligent comment inside your head?

The truth is that hair isn’t heavy at all. An average inch of hair weighs about 50 µg. Calculating from those numbers and actually attempting to weigh my hair (That isn’t easy to get accurate!) lands my thick, knee length hair at around 250 gram. That’s not a whole lot, is it?

The weight of hair itself doesn’t cause headaches.

What actually causes hair-headaches are:

• Unevenly distributed weight from an updo where a lot of weight is pulling on a few hairs
• Not packing the updo close to the head. Its basically torque like we know from physics and mechanics

But today after my cassia-treatment I can feel it. Not a headache as such, but more feeling… Irritated and heavy in the head.

Of course this is after first 1 hour 15 minutes of cassia and then 3½ hour of V05!

So how much weight do I have piled on my head?

Water weight: I’m not sure how much the moisture inside my hair adds to the weight. Double it? Less? More? The only way to know would have been if I weighed it before adding the conditioner. I will set it to just 100 grams extra (Equals having absorbed just 1 dl of water, which I doubt it set too high)

Conditioner: 200 ml = At least 200 gram

Cling wrap and metal foil = Are less than my digital scale can register, so 5 gram?

Heatpack = 85 gram

3 warm hats = 240 gram

So that ads up to 630 grams (!) extra weight left piled up on my skull for 4 hours and 45 minutes.

As I wrote already: I don’t have a headache, but my head doesn’t feel entirely happy either.

When it takes so much to actually cause a headache, why do people cling to the headache-argument against long hair? 

Cassia day!

It has seriously been ages since last I really spoiled my hair. Yesterday was supposed to be a cassia 4-in-1-treatment day according to my Project Knee Length plan. It has turned out to be a huge waste of time to have planned that one out since it seems I mentally rebel against the idea of having my haircare planned out like that. Sigh. I guess it doesn’t help that I actually did hit knee length, which is something I seriously doubted I ever would at the time. Classic to knee is the second most frustrating growth stage I have ever been through. Argh! I guess since I hit knee length I have been slacking on the hair care…

4 in 1 treatment
Cleansing
Conditioning
Scalp exfoliating
Mud bath

Igor’s golden tone cassia mix
50 ml cassia powder

50 ml of camomile tea
One pot of green tea
200 ml of conditioner

Directions
Mix cassia powder with cold camomile tea and the conditioner.
Cover hair in the mud and wrap the length of the hair up in a pile (Do not braid!) Cover with cling wrap, heat pack, metal foil (Charming!) and a warm hat. Wrap some old towel over your neck and shoulders as it can drip!
Stay warm for 30 minutes.
Pour the leftover teas in the tub. Fill halfway with water (Or quarter way, at least enough to cover the scalp when you lay down in it)
Remove cling wrap and hat and hop in the tub.
Allow length of hair to soak in the water to dissolve the bulk of the mud (This is often referred to as a “mermaid soak”) before scrubbing the scalp (This is why you shouldn’t braid) The cassia mud is excellent at exfoliating the scalp, but the grainy structure of the mud might be rough on the hair strands.
Soak in the green mud bath and enjoy. Some people use cassia and henna specifically for skin and nail health, so spend some time soaking and relax.

Follow with a good deep conditioner as the cassia seems to be somewhat drying.
Rinse and continue styling hair as usual.
Enjoy the feel of clean and conditioned hair and a fresh and exfoliated scalp!

Ingredients for some hair pampering <3
Cassia treatment with cholesterol, Franck Provost and V05

Conditioning with V05

ACV dip

One thing is for sure when it comes to cassia: It doesn’t look pretty!

It doesn’t get better once it’s mixed with water in a tub. Especially not when it forms foam from rinsing conditioner out…