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.