Today's hair

Double Royal buns. Cute!

Today's hair

Double braided Chinese buns.

Today's hair

Four little braids again. I liked that one!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Since we were going to my parents' place for Christmas, we haven't really bothered with decorations or a Christmas three for ourselves. 

Good thing the 3D Christmas calendar from Rituals could double as a one!

But we all prefer the real thing...

Merry Christmas!

17 years

So today it has been 17 years since I shaved my head.
Wow.
Next year it will be half my life ago. (Now that´s a thought that makes me feel old!!!)
Unfortunately I got stuck at work, so I can´t find the energy to take a length shot today.
I´ll try to get it done soon.

Yay!

I just turned in my final project!
This feels so good. Since work went a "little" crazy, going to school at the same time felt like a huge strain. So it's such a relief to be done with it. I'm looking forward to wake up without that knot of stress in my stomach.
Now I eagerly await to hear if I have failed or passed.

Cinnamon bun, take two

This time I did my initial braid with the purpose of making a cinnamon bun and got a bit more "direction" for the braid, which resulted in a more flat and smooth bun.

The "bump" is still there, just not as noticeable.
(And for some reason my phone insisted on focusing on my super amazingly interesting ear and I didn't notice until I got the pictures out. Sorry!)

Cinnamon bun

I was absentmindedly messing around with my hair and found I had wrapped it up in a nice cinnamon bun. It actually felt really comfortable!

Which is funny, because it's one of those styles I "abandoned" years ago for not having enough hold?

Maybe it was because I wrapped it around under the Ron Quattro instead of putting the pin into the finished style?

It did however form a really big "bump" in the middle of the bun that I disliked.
Maybe if I start off the braid with the intention of forming a cinnamon bun it will be smoother?

Throwback Thursday

Ah, the time where I had the patience to put my hair in like 20 little braids. 

When I took it back out, it left a cool textured effect in my hair.

Of course the second I combed it, it dramatically went *poufff!!!!* 

*cough* Another Christmas calendar, whoops

I figured I had enough Christmas calendars already. I got Lookfantastics and Rituals again because those were my favorites last year. Hubby got me an Anthon Berg as well (Danish luxury chocolate and amazingly good marzipan) and I even got a mini-Rittersport calendar from work too!

One I was actually interested in was Skinstores, but since they pissed me off so badly last year I wasn't going to get it. But then they had it for just 66 USD on black Friday and I caved. Like last year, I'm going to open it after Christmas like it was intended for.

Oh well. It's here now and I'm looking forward to it.

Funny detail: I liked the box so much last year I kept it and used it to store my supplements and other small items in. It looks like the box is completely identical this year, so now I will have two that matches!

An experiment in laziness: Day 3

Day 3, two cinnamon buns.
And it's definitely not just me, because that's a lot of flyways. I have an actual halo going on!

An experiment in laziness: Day 2

Day two and I went for a simple Chinese bun. Nothing fancy there.
Maybe it's just the Rosenthal effect, but I think I see a lot of flyaways. Is it just me?

An experiment in laziness: Day 1

Day one of the lazy/French braid experiment and I'm starting off with a crown wrap/Chinese bun combination.

It was actually mildly uncomfortable because the crown wrap didn't have a clear "bump" to lsupport itself against like it does with the Dutch braid. So it slid around a little more than I'm used to.

An experiment in laziness

Here's the finished French braid for my planned experiment.

I actually think I did a pretty good job! It's been a long time since last I did a French braid.

A theory on braids

I want to expand my experiment in laziness on different types of braids. For the original experiment, I found that my scalp got surprisingly tender after the five days. And when I say surprisingly, I don't mean that it got very tender, but more that I was surprised it got tender at all because I rarely "notice" my scalp at all (Did that make sense?)

An experiment in laziness

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

So I want to try the experiment in laziness with a different type of braids and for less days. I want to see the difference between French and Dutch braids for this.

But I have an idea on how the different braid types will influence the result, so I will try to explain my thoughts as best as I can.

If you imagine looking up or down the length of the braid against your head, the braid has two "parts" where additional hair is taken in along the length.

For a French braid, the hair goes above and into the existing braid.

Which means that for the French braid the place where the additional hair gets locked down is between the scalp and the braid. This means that the hair has to "travel" further and can't be pulled as firmly in place as for a Dutch braid.

For a Dutch braid, the hair goes under and into the existing braid.

Which means that for the Dutch braid the place where the additional hair gets locked down is between the scalp and the braid. Just like for the French braid. But unlike the French braid, the additional hair has to "travel" shorter, can be pulled tighter and is completely parallel to the scalp.

My point with this is that the French braid should develop more flyaways, and become more unstable and less comfortable faster than the Dutch braid.

Tomorrow I will make two French braids to test this on.

That was a nice surprise

The beauty calendars are generally too much makeup for my needs. And low in hair products.

But today to my surprise, I got not only one, but two hair products. And some I will actually try!

From Lookfantastic: A leave in conditioner. This is a perfect size to travel with so it will go directly into my almost-packed travel bag.

From Rituals: A hair and body oil. It smells wooden and oily, nice. Will definitely try this one.

Winter

Today is the first official winter day. This is usually where my scalp starts to calm down a bit again after its freakout over the autumn changes.

It has been really cold for a while, but stabile without a lot of differences in weather. So that's good. It will make my scalp ease down faster.

It's also time for lots of social events and hopefully I can keep up with some fun and festive updos for the occasions.

Today's hair

The Royal bun/Nautilus combination is... Nice... I guess?
The good things are that it got fairly flat, felt stable and held pretty high up on my head.

The bad thing (And this is my usual complaint when I experiment, I think?) that it doesn't look that much different from the parent style. And then, whats the point?

Today's hair

I have an idea of making a Royal bun/Nautilus combination: I will put a stick through the top braid, then wrap the bottom braid up and around the stick like a royal bun and securing the top braid around it like a Nautilus.

In my mind it adds up to a nice, flat Nautilus, but we will see tomorrow.

DNA tests away!

Hubby and I ordered the 23 and me DNA tests. I would have gone with another supplier, but hubby really wanted to check for diseases, and 23 and me are the only ones that seems to cater to that.

Hubby's family just reconnected with some family that immigrated to USA in the early 1900'es and they brought some information on his family with them. It shocked me how much shorter his side of the family lives! Everyone in my family (What I know of) has lived into their 90es, so I understand his worry.

So what do I expect the tests to show?

For me:
I don't expect much for diseases: We have had a bit of skin cancer here and there in my family, but that is probably just from being really pale people in general.
As for the genealogy, I expect a lot of Danish. Like, a lot.
My great grandfather was from an area that was disputed territory between Denmark and Germany, so he experienced being both German and danish in his lifetime. His family name was Langholz, so that fits with the area too. So I expect about 12 % German there.
Supposedly I also have a sailor from the Spanish armada in my lineage, but my grandfather found a hint that he might have been a french mercenary instead? So maybe he was a French mercenary in Spanish service?
I strongly suspect this is where I get my hair from. Scandinavian hair just doesn't grow as thick and strong as mine.

For hubby:
Hubby thinks he will show half Swedish and German of an unknown quantity. His lineage is a bit of a mess, especially since his grandmother was adopted from Germany after WWII, so he could be a quarter anything really.
I personally have an idea it will show more Swedish ancestry than he thinks it will. Hubby has a completely different built than me: He has heavy bones, build muscles just by looking at a dumbbell and gains weight like his body constantly expects it has to live through the fimbulwinter. Take off his modern clothes and hand him an axe, and he would probably be indistinguishable from a historical Swedish viking.
It will be fun to see what it says!

Annoying elastics

Argh. I had yet another broken elastic inside my bun when I took the braid down yesterday.

It seems I have an annoying mix of really good and a lot of bad elastics in my little elastics-jar. Which is super annoying because it wasn't so long ago I cleaned up the jar and replaced them with what I assumed was good elastics!

I had bought a bunch of Glitters (Accessory chain in Denmark and Sweden) elastics, but it turned out that not all of their elastics are the same.

The small elastics that come in a little "envelope" is way stronger and more durable than the ones that come in any of their other packaging! Strange, because they should come from the same factory and "recipe", right? But there is an obvious difference.
So I bought a pile of those to replace them all.

I sorted the contents of the elastics-jar. I spent some time pulling and rubbing on the different elastics to see if I could find any sort of pattern to which ones are good. Some of them even have a very low tolerance for oil and will break apart quickly.
It would be useful to be able to spot the good elastics instead of having to buy and try them all.

I didn't feel I got a lot wiser from that. I have a vague idea that the lesser glossy/shiny elastics have some better grip then the rest. And maybe the more opaque ones are silicone instead of plastic.
But this is just my vague speculation.

I tossed every elastic that didn't look like the new batch.

Done! That took an annoyingly long time, but hopefully the elastics will not irritate me further.

Christmas gifts

Since I'm completely unable to say no to work (My pay is a double edged sword because the money is so good, but it makes it so hard to say no to!) I ended up with a pretty crappy Christmas plan.

Basically I would see my family after Christmas.

That made me feel like an asshole, so I planned, bought and packaged an advent calendar for my mom, my dad, my brother, my sister in law and all of their four boys. 

I dropped it off at my parent's place two weeks ago. 

I made a spreadsheet to keep track of, and organize this!

Then one of my coworkers got herself fired (Which is a whole pile of drama in itself, but meh, I'll try to keep my blog free of that) and I, and my remaining coworkers could make another Christmas plan.

So suddenly I will come for Christmas with my family along with hubby.

Which is of course good news, but it feels a little funny after compensating with the advent calendars for not being there!

The three big gifts are huge and heavy

Oh well. It will be fun! 

Also, we have now fixed almost everything gift-related for our families: We sent the gifts to hubby's family the same day I went to my visit my parents. It feels surprisingly awesome to be done with something that is usually stressful and annoying.

Luckily the gifts we sent for hubby's family were a lot smaller and lighter

I do have a question for my readers though: 

What would you give for Christmas gifts for four boys between the age of 13 and 20?? 

I have some very vague ideas of what games and brands that should be popular, but damn... I'll probably end up giving up and just giving them cash again, but that feels so sad! You might as well just print "I have no idea who you are as a person or what you like" on it.

On weird habits

Often when you explain the basics of growing healthy long hair to other people,you get a weird look. Benign neglect, CO wash, S&D etc. seems like such a bizarre idea to people.

But I have a single thing that even I think is slightly weird: I remove the tags of all my shirts and sweaters to not damage my hair.

I got the idea some 10+ years ago and spent an entire day removing the tags.
You pay so much attention to your tools being smooth and hair friendly, but what about shirts?
After all, you pull something over your head at least four times a day. Surely that must add up to a lot of damage?

Not so sure it actually does, but meh, it can't hurt. Right?

By now it has pretty much become a habit when I get new clothes.

If nothing else, it does limit the itching and scratching from tags. So I guess this falls under the "I'm not sure it actually does anything but I guess it can't hurt"-rule. 

*Shrug*

Throwback Thursday

Hehe. Look at that!

That was the little "nest" I created for the long hours of waiting for the first time I was going to do a light henna treatment. Looks so cozy!

The initial dripping drove me absolutely crazy even with the piles of towels, and later I realized that the best way to deal with that was to stay in the bathtub for the first hour or so. It doesn't change the annoying dripping at all, but since it drips wet on wet, it becomes a lot less annoying.

Story time: Breaking the wash

Back when I first started learning about methods for haircare, one of the things I really wanted to learn was how to do the most gentle washes possible.
I quickly started working on the conditioner only washes. Before I shaved my head, I would shampoo something like 3 times a week. But I started alternating with CO washes and trying to stretch the time before I had to shampoo.
After maybe half a year I had gotten it down to shampooing once a week. But after more months of trying, I just couldn't go lower. My scalp would become greasy and itchy and I would give up.
This was back when LHC was awesome and you could learn everything worth knowing, so I asked there for advice. Someone told how she had the same problem, but after letting her hair go uncomfortably greasy, it was like the plateau "broke" and she could go CO exclusively. She suggested it was something that would recondition your scalp into becoming less oily. I wasn't sure how/if it would work, but I figured why not?
I took the advice and found a stretch in my calendar where I could get away with very little social interaction.
(Who wants to see someone's nasty, greasy hair? We have social standards for hygiene for a reason! Seriously, pandemics have been halted by teaching people basic things like not spitting everywhere on the street. People not washing their hair to be "crunchy" or whatever is one of my pet peeves.)
After a week with no shampoo, I felt greasy and uncomfortable. But I kept going.
I think I managed to go 11 days before I caved in and shampooed. By then, my hair felt you could break it off in bits and light it like candles. So seriously nasty! I could barely stand myself.
But the tip worked. For some reason, and I'm not sure I can formulate the logic behind why it worked, it worked. Being allowed to completely grease over seemed to convince my scalp it needed to produce less grease.
After that, I went exclusively CO. It was very successful for me. My scalp loves CO and is completely at peace with it. CO has managed to help my scalp build a strong and resilient moisture barrier and it feels completely normal and healthy. It is completely different from my skin everywhere else which is highly reactive and irritated.
I still shampoo maybe once a year or so though; Usually in the autumn when my scalp becomes unhappy with the wet and cold air outside and hot and dry air inside, and I can't be bothered to keep CO'ing the flakes.
It was disgusting while it happened, but the result was awesome and worth it!

Today's hair

Two French braids put into a braided Chinese bun. A simple classic.