5-stranded braid, second attempt

So my brilliant idea from yesterday was to split my hair in 5 slices as a cake if you imagine my head seen from above. Then I would take the two front parts, then the second two and finally the back part in and braid that way.

It turned out as a pretty big fail though: The front that I wanted to make the two first parts out of, is so much finer and less dense than the hair from the back of my head. I then thought I could fix it by “fish tailing” and add more hair as I got the first few steps done. Seemed like a good idea in theory, but in reality I ended up in a huge tangled mess of hair! I couldn’t tell where I was coming from or going to or keep the five strands apart at all. Yikes.

I ended up having to comb everything out again and start over. Since my idea of an organised and controlled 5-stranded braid failed so hard, I decided to try once more where I just “feel my way” before quitting.

Next time I just split in five by feeling and started braiding along the way to focus on the “feel” and get used to the motion. The result was much better.

I thought I managed to keep the 5-strand pattern all along the way, but looking at the picture I’m not entirely sure. There are a few messy points above my shoulders where it doesn’t look like I kept the 5-strand pattern, but otherwise it looks pretty acceptable.

The 5-strand pattern doesn’t look very distinguishable from a 3-strand braid until about waist length though. I guess the 5-strand braid is another style that isn’t exactly friendly to thick hair?

I have a note that might be very useful though: Combing the lose hair makes the parts “blend” into each other and makes them hard to separate. I need to learn the balance between combing to keep it smooth and not combing to keep the parts separated.