Package arrived

Since the package has arrived, I can reveal the secret item back from here.
I had this made for my awesome designer Madison!

The full text is

Thank you,
Madison Zoepel
Official graphics designer to
http://www.igorsbelltower.blogspot.com/

Growth?

I just compared my latest length shot with the 9½ years one (Back from June) and I’m surprised at how little growth I’ve had in 6 months. I know I’m not the fastest grower, but still…?

My hair is slightly wavier in the last shot and the ends seem thicker, but I think I should have grown more. If I look at the knee crease it looks like the ends were just a cm above in June and a cm below now in January.

What do you all think?

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And since I have your attention, what do you all think of me taking off half my “planned” 2012 growth so I’ll gain 9 cm and lose 9 cm off the ends?

10 years anniversary photos

I’m just going to shut up and show off

Late night fridge raid

Hubby took this picture of me raiding the fridge in my pyjamas and a bathrobe to dry off my freshly CO washed hair. I quite liked the picture!

Note that I’m wearing little claw clips to keep my hair out of my face. I have absolutely no natural parting and need to tie my hair up or pin it back to see!

I must admit I’m very shocked at how my ends look! I knew that sticking with no trims in 2011 would take its toll on them, but I thought I would be closer to my usual blunt cut than this. Now I’m really itching for a trim!

My opinion on the ends aside, I think it looks pretty cool that my hair goes so far down the almost floor length bathrobe.

    

Hello, 2012!

I hope everyone got well into 2012 with no fireworks injuries and hangovers?

2011 was the year where I started this blog and where I finally reached that cursed knee length.

Going to focus on what I’m good at for my blog for a while; Writing. At least I think that’s one of my strengths?

We’ll see if I return to the videos at some point. But for now, I have a new page up: Hair geek dictionary.

Hubby and I had a pretty quiet new years eve together. He managed to get me with the influenza he had over Christmas, so both Christmas and new years ended up pretty subdued.

 

Look what my darling hubby got us for New Years Eve:

   

 

I have the best hubby in the world!

  

Totally random Christmas present picture:

Cute!!

Silly little random find share of the day

Totally cute, but will definitely not work for my hair length!

My hubby is awesome!

I can’t always figure out how hubby feels about my hair obsession and my blogging. I know he likes my hair very much but I think he finds it slightly weird that I never shampoo and that I spend a lot of time searching for information and new tools and toys.

I think his opinion on the whole blog can be summed up with what he said the first time he learned about it: “You write about your hair? And you have people reading about your hair?”. Mildly confused amusement indeed.

He takes my pictures without complaining and some times comes up to me when I’m writing and asks me what I’m writing about. But when it comes to me replying or when I start a conversation about my latest obsession, I always had a feeling he was just keeping a polite smile on top of his mildly confused, mildly uninterested amusement.

Well, today my darling hubby proved that he actually does pay attention and does care!

Look what was among our packages:

     

Slight delay of plans

I had planned to take some god length shots of my hair to celebrate the ten years ”birthday” but my dedicated photographer is currently propped up in bed with my heat packs and all the covers I could find.

Poor hubby!

He is really, really sick and pathetic. I hope he will feel better soon so he won’t have to celebrate Christmas in bed with a bowlful of soup instead of the delicious food I’m going to prepare.

Happy ten years “birthday” to my hair

It's 2 in the morning right now, so it’s officially my hairs 10 years "birthday". 10 years since I shaved my head!

Time flies!

Hah, if someone had told me those ten years ago that I would end up growing to knee length hair, I would have laughed.

Funny how things goes.

Back then I just wanted to get rid of the crappy lemon damage and try something new. Then I wanted to grow it long enough to go in a ponytail…Then into a braid…Then into a bun…Then into a knotty bun…Then into a braided Nautilus.

It sneaks up on you, the hair.

  

       

Right now I’m more interested in the Christmas preparations. Hubby is off at work and I would like to have finished some of it before he comes home so we can enjoy a relaxing and stress free Christmas.

I’m giving my hair a new comb and some argan oil for its “birthday” and Christmas.

Live and learn

I have been encouraged by people to do a YouTube channel for many years but have been hesitant to do it for a number of reasons

• I personally don’t care much for the video format when it comes to leaning new hairstyles. I prefer photo tutorials and will skip embedded videos when I read blogs or forums.
• The hair channels seems to be crawling with disgusting hair fetishists and I have no desire to cater to a crowd that routinely steal mine and other longhairs pictures and posts them as their own (Some even put a © on stolen images. Seriously.)
• There are so plenty of good channels (A million bad ones too) so I would have very little to “offer” anyways.
• YouTube comments are where brains go to die.
• Maybe my biggest argument is that it seems there is a world of difference in the reactions between photos and videos. On picture tutorials you will see a vast majority of positive reactions although you will always have the occasional “I don’t get it?!1” on a crystal clear how-to. Even when someone posts pictures of horribly abused hair, people have the heart to post encouraging comments and helpful hints. Videos? OMG the criticism! Viewers even act like you should be appreciative they took the time to post how much they hated the videos.

Since most people seemed to have been perfectly happy with my pictures and picture tutorials, what the [bleep] was I thinking staring a YouTube channel?

I just wanted to prove my philosophy that long hair is easy and versatile is true and that knee length hair really isn’t that much work or trouble.

I thought by disabling ratings and comments on the video, people would get the hint that I wasn’t interested in criticism. In the last work I put in on the video I thought of mentioning in the long braiding sequence (That I didn’t speed up because I wanted to show exactly how long/short it takes to braid my knee length hair) that I didn’t want comments or criticism. I changed my mind because it felt “provocative” to order people around like that. I decided to put in the text about how uncomfortable it makes me feel to be watched and felt it would explain that I’m insecure about the whole thing.

Guess that was a humongous fail to assume people would get that?

So based on the criticism I received in the blog comments and on my email, I should change… Everything. That’s right; my first attempt of a video was such a horrendous eyesore that there is nothing likeable about it.

(I especially “enjoyed” the complaints about Bloggers comment feature. Because that is something I can change, right? That’s Bloggers issue and I can’t do a damn thing about it.)

So yea, apologies to the sweet people who encouraged me and who genuinely just wanted to see me handle my hair, but I think this will be my first and last video.

Speaking of sweetness I have this one to mail today. I had planned on getting something from one of the little specialty chocolate stores in the city and figured if I was out early, I wouldn’t be trampled by the Christmas-stressed crowd. Well, it turned out that everyone else had the very same idea?! Wow. Seriously, they need to find a way to weaponise those vicious old ladies with their strollers. Ow.