Igors bell tower

Thursday, 26 January 2012

Zoom out

A bigger version of the previous picture… It involves a bit of skin and an annoying hubby trying to avoid getting elbowed (Hence my expression) in the face so I had to crop it a lot

I experienced a very sneaky shed from stress and depression about 3 years ago. When I say sneaky, I mean that I didn’t even know I had it until I saw the irritating halo from regrowth. I probably lost just a few extra hairs per day which is nothing even the most eager and attentive longhair would notice.

The regrowth in total is about the thickness of a finger if I gather it all up, so I lost quite a bit!

It has been a giant pain in the ass to deal with the halo and right up until I could get it into a ponytail and hold it in with the up do, I’ve been very dependant on headbands.

Now that the majority of it is shoulder length, I barely notice it.

I had some strands poking out of my braid today in a kind of cute way and took a picture of it.

My mane looks really impressive when I zoom in on it like this, heh!

1 year’s blog birthday

Well, actually the blog has existed for longer than that since I spent a day or two setting up stuff, but my first post was a year ago!

So happy birthday to my blog!

When I first started this blog I didn’t have many expectations, after the whole LHC fiasco I just wanted to move my blogging to a more independent site. (Some times regretting the choice of Blogger when the comments option acts up but done is done)

I really didn’t expect much. After all, it took me years to build a reputation as being worth listening to and I didn’t expect people to get used to visit my private blog (Or be able to find it)

It was a really pleasant surprise to see my little blog grow over the months.

Now one year later I have 231 posts with this one, 50 followers and over 50 thousand page views in total!

I’m very happy and surprised, so thank you to all my followers! You are what make blogging worth it!

Oh and just because I find it a bit amusing, here is my traffic overview up to today… What’s with the weird spike around April?

Sunday, 22 January 2012

Build up question

After revisisting the articles I can find on the subject and generally poking about on forums and blogs now taking into account information on the different properties of different types of silicone. Looking at the sunsilk leave in I know we both use it contains both dimethicone and amodimethicone. Now amodimethicone is in itself not water soluble but together with trideceth-12 it is and since sunsilk contains trideceth-12 it should be removed just fine (according to the sources I used). However, dimethicone which is also in the sunsilk leave-in balm isn't water soluble. I notice other people write about clarifying in order to remove dimethicone build-up but you've never mentioned clarifying your hair, yet you don't seem to experience problems from build-up, how do you solve the build-up issue, and how often do you have to deal with it?
~msn00b

It’s pretty simple…

I solve the build-up issue by not having a build-up issue.

Honestly, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve had to clarify and still have fingers to spare.

The times when I’ve had to clarify has all been ”back in the day” where I was new to the whole longhair circuit and was way too eager to condition and care for my hair.

It’s been some expensive lessons a few times: Once back when I had shoulder length hair I had used a coconut oil-leave in thing (Think Palmers Coconut something-something?) that got super greasy and weird in my hair. I then used shampoo to get it out, but it didn’t seem to work on the first round, so I shampooed again. Then it just got even worse! I swear, somehow the fatty coconutty-coney thing fused with the cones in the Fructis shampoo I used and turned into some sort of disgusting lumpy super-coconutty-coney-greaseball. Yikes! I shampooed and shampooed and eventually emptied the bottle and had to go to bed with greasy-icky hair and run to the store next morning to get a clarifying shampoo. I had to shampoo nine times in all to get my hair back to normal! My scalp felt completely fried after that.

Well, I learned my lesson on over-conditioning healthy hair then.

It wasn’t until I was at around waist length before my hair even accepted any kind of oil or protein without flipping out on me.

Coarse hair has an extra layer (That is what makes coarse hair coarse) and it makes it difficult for oil and protein to penetrate, so they just “sit there” and can mess up the texture of the hair. It seems that coarse hair simply needs to take some damage before it will accept oils and protein. Not sure it’s a good thing I can oil my hair now!

Of course I knew people were saying that, back then but I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to try all these cool new things, especially this coconut oil that everyone seemed to love so much!

The whole “Benign Neglect” that the super long hairs always praised just seemed so boring. Hah, now I’m being one of them too.

Now I condition 0-2 times a week, usually in connection with having to wash my scalp. It’s obviously not enough to cause build-up or other issues for my hair type.

I try to add some more care to my ends since they can “take” more conditioning than the roots by doing an Ankylosaurus without the heatpack overnight. It works really well. My ends love the extra care and I don’t upset the top and risk over conditioning it.

So well, boring anecdotes aside my answer is: If you don’t overdo conditioning, cones or no cones, you don’t have to clarify.

Skin speculations

I’m really not sure what to think of the La Roche-Posay skin care line (Now there’s a brand name I will never, ever be able to remember!) that I have been using for two weeks or so now.

On one hand, I think the tendency for my skin to be red and irritated has gone down a bit and it looks a bit better, but…

About half the times when I apply the skin tonic and cream, my skin feels “flushed” and irritated for about a minute. That is definitely not a good sign. In my opinion there are only two times where redness and irritation is not a bad sign: After an exfoliation where the skin has been mechanically manipulated and after a mud mask where the skin is irritated after having been dried out or having the pores opened and gunk hauled out.

Redness when applying cream does not mean that the product is working! Redness means that the skin hates the product!

Also I have a breakout coming right at the left side “bend” on my jaw line. As someone who gets maybe one normal zit per year on average, this is definitely a warning sign. Especially since it’s been there for a day or two and it doesn’t seem to be “squeeze ready” yet. I’m worried it might be a cystic mo-fo in the making… Yikes.

I have experience one of those many years ago in a crazy moment of “Hey, let’s take a handful of B vitamins to grow the hair faster!!!1!” and it was unbelievably uncomfortable and disgusting.

Strangely with those two big fat warning signs, my skin generally seems to be doing better. Huh?!

Thursday, 19 January 2012

Q&A

I've been meaning to ask you, (you don't have to answer if yu don't want to i comlpetely understand that you have bettr stuff to do than answer strangers' questions) perhaps this is a silly question ... but I've gone from no cone's to cones because I like the idea of a protecting "film" over the hairstrand so I started using Sunsilks leave in balm, but now I'm sort of struggling with my own thoughts.

Here goes: The protecting film of silicone also protetcs from good stuff ie oil etc so in your experience, is there any way of getting the silicone film off of the hairstrand using CO or WO so I can "feed" the hair some oil on ends once or twice a week?
I hope it's ok that I asked
regards

Ms.N00b

First of all, no I don’t mind answering questions.

Second of all, I really think this would be a question better asked to Little Piggy or (^(oo)^) on UTT since she seems to really know her stuff when it comes to product ingredients and especially cones.

Anyways, it’s funny timing because I just CO washed some leftover hemp oil out of my hair after an overnight Ankylosaurus oiling. Last night I took half my braid out, put oil on it and rebraided it for the Ankylosaurus. Last morning I had used my normal old coney Sunsilk on it when I braided it. This morning I washed it out with some coney VO5. So I applied oil on cone’d hair and washed it out again with cones.

I never ever felt I had issues with “not penetrating” when it came to oil and my hair. But of course my personal experience isn’t really an explanation in itself.

Anyways. I find it annoying and yet funny when people talk about “cones” like it’s just a single ingredient that works in one single way. “Cones” are a huge and diverse group. Some are water soluble, some are more prone to build up than other, some are heavy some are light.

“Cones” is not a single thing. It’s as stupid referring to “cones” as a single ingredient as to refer to “oil” as a single ingredient that only works in one single way.

Of course when you put it as “protects from good stuff ie oil” I want to ask how much you think other ingredients really penetrate?

The fact is that most ingredients in products don’t go very deep. Most of them only deposits in the outer layer of the hair strands. Of course this depends on hair type as most coarsies will have problems with proteins not being able to penetrate the extra layer of their hair that makes coarse hair coarse.

Not all oils penetrate either!

Even if we did say that cones coated the hair strands so thoroughly that nothing could penetrate, would it be so much worse than when other “good stuff” fills up the hair strands? I mean, this is exactly why we condition our hair in the first place: To fill up the damaged areas and protect the strands on a microscopic level.

Of course it really isn’t the case even though one of the most common “anti cone arguments” is that “It blocks out moisture!” which makes me wonder how people can get their hair wet at all if that’s the case…

Anyways, I guess my point is that you should just try it. I could write page up and page down about penetration and ingredients and oils, but in the end it comes down to your hair type and the state of your hair strands. Some experiences build up easily and others with the same hair type never had issues with it.

My personal experience has been that my cone usage never interfered with oils. (Except for olive oil, but that has to do with the fact that my hair doesn’t like olive oil, cones or not)

If you’re feeling worried about “blocking” maybe you should shampoo before using oil, then you can always add some cones afterwards if you think it will lock the oil in?

More goodies for me!

Look what Biologist Friend/American Scientist Friend brought back from the

for me (And hubby)!

Teriyaki beef jerky, one bag for each
Hair mayonnaise (Why does my hair have such an unreasonable love for “black hair” products? And why are they such a pain to find here?)
Teeth whitening strips (No kidding, but that’s one of the things I really miss from the US. The teeth whitening products I can find legally in Denmark/Sweden are completely ineffective and expensive)