Folded braid

Pretty simple folded up braid from today

I made a Dutch braid and secured with a black elastic, then folded the tail under itself and folded the braid up again. Then secured with 2 black elastics and an expensive Hello Kitty rhinestone elastic I bought once and used like… twice now…

Night time experimentation

Heh, clever title, huh?

We all have our ideas of what we do best and what we do worst for our hair. Those things we have worked out perfectly and those we really need to work on to make better.

My thing that I’m worst at comes to sleeping. I sleep on my sides (and somewhere between side and stomach) and I’m a restless sleeper. This is where people will usually just recommend silk pillow covers and that would fix the problem. But…

Silk freaks me out when I sleep.

There. I wrote it. Yes, it sounds weird. But it does.

It’s like silk just balances that fine line between feeling organic and not feeling organic and the times I have tried to sleep on silk covers, I wake up every time I turn around. Silk just creep me out, even when I’m not conscious. It’s like some primal part of my brain sounds the alarm thinking I have rolled over to rest my head on a slippery snake (And I’m not afraid of snakes) and it will eat me alive.

I don’t know what’s worst and the most annoying: Waking up so often and not getting any real quality sleep or that half a second where the caveman part of my brain has taken over and is telling me to run for my life!

You can’t argue with the results though. Sleeping on silk left my hair practically unruffled even for a restless sleeper. If I just could get used to it, I could really save those fragile temple-hairs from a lot of damage.

The area around the temples has hairs that have a shorter life span than the rest. This is why people start going grey around the temples first. Just like all other cells in the body, the follicles have a certain life span. They can only produce so many “sets” of hair strand before they start breaking down and not function as flawless as before. The follicles will stop producing melanin as efficiently as before and eventually stop putting the melanin in the hair strands layers.

I always thought that on top of the hairs having a shorter life span than the rest of the scalp, they grow more fragile too even when you’re young. But I have never seen any scientific evidence to that, so I guess it will stay my personal suspicion.

I tried with satin: Same deal. I tried with microfiber and wasn’t sure if that was actually better than cotton, sure it feels smoother to touch, but on the microscopic level, is it really? My hair seemed to “stick” to it a lot.

So, smooth pillow cases were kind of out of the question. Of course I guess if I just “soldiered on” for long enough I could get used to it, but that would probably take me a very, very long time. And cost me too much quality sleep.

Then I had the idea of sleeping on the couch and covering the top half of the sheets with silk. Of course that wouldn’t help the hair that would rest on my pillow, but it would be gentler to the hair from my shoulders and down. I tried it and sure, the silk still freaked me out, but not as bad as when it’s touching my face. I still woke up from time to time turning over and touching my naked arms to the smooth fabric.

Of course the problem is making some silk that can cover the entire top half of a king sized bed and not get bunched up from me turning over…

A few nights ago I had the idea of shortening up my braid for sleeping. I sleep with my hair in a braid. If I have my hair in a braid during the day, I completely ignore it all day and then sleep on it. If I have my hair in a bun, I take it down and braid it for night.

A single braid is classic length on me, so it gets caught under my hips when I turn over. By now I have made an unconscious habit out of doing some weird little extra tug/motion thing whenever I turn over in my sleep so I don’t yank my head back. It’s about the same I do when I wear a braid and go sit on a chair: A little shrug with one shoulder so the braid falls in front of me instead of getting caught. In the bed, the little tug doesn’t work 100% though.

Anyways, I looped the end of my braid up to about waist length and secured it with a soft elastic. It worked really well. No more getting the braid caught under my weight. I will keep doing that loop up for sleeping. Maybe combine it with some sort of silk bag-thingie (It’s a technical term!) to protect the ends. No matter what, the loop will be here to stay!

And I really should go hunting for some sort of silk bonnet. It would really save my fragile temple hairs from a lot of rubbing.
           

Tuesday the 3rd of May

I have some annoying things in my life I really should deal with. But instead of getting them done, I find myself being completely unmotivated and procrastinating. Can’t even get myself to work on useful-unnecessary things such as the blog, I’m literally doing nothing at all. Meh.

Anyways.

Last Saturday was coconut oil-day, but I procrastinated on that too and didn’t get coconut oil in my hair until yesterday. A tablespoon of oil distributed in the bottom half of my hair and up in a braided nautilus bun. Today I melted more oil in the microwave oven, dipped the bottom half of the braid in it, bagged it and wrapped an elastic bandage around.

Tomorrow is coloured hair-conditioner day. I like using those in the summer time since most of them boasts of having UV filter. I will always be suspicious of how good the products for hair are at actually protecting hair from sun, but when it comes to sun protection I guess every little bit helps.

Last Wednesday I did an overnight Ankylosaurus with two egg yolks, a scoop of cholesterol treatment and some Frank Provost expert reparation leftovers.

I really should try to get back in the hair-habits… And get my lazy ass back to the gym. Meh

More pictures from Göteborg

Weird face is from me biting my lip lol

I’m very disappointed… I really thought I would be at a clear, obvious knee length by now!

Göteborg meeting

It was actually the second time I was in Göteborg to meet other vaguely creepy endearing weirdos from the longhair world. Almost the same people as last, so that only made it more fun that we already somewhat know each other

Of course it was one of those days where my hair just wouldn’t behave! I wanted to make a hybrid bun with one strand braided and one strand roped, but my hair completely refused to play along! Sigh.

And yet, when I was on the bus heading for the train station, someone came up to me and asked if she could take a picture of my hair! That was a new experience for me!

I’m not very good with compliments and started blushing and stuttering. Bleah.

Was still pretty funny… Especially on a day where I thought my hair was being a total pain.

It made me wonder if there are other pictures of my hair “out there” taken without my permission.

It turned out it was really easy to find Kostifik and Isilme. I mean, how often do you spot other buns out “in the wild”? Buns with hairsticks in? Hennaed buns with hairsticks in?

Yea, never :)

For a while I’ve been considering doing a light henna tint to get a bit more red in my hair, but both of them are henna-heads wanting to get rid of it, so I took it as a sign!

Later we met up with HappyKarin and Maria_Asa for food, shopping and looking around Göteborg

I treated myself to a big chunk of Sexy Peel, a Lush soap with a wonderfully warm and sweet orange scent (A little impressed at my nose that I could “spot” it in a store full of hundreds of other scents and track it down)

We stopped in a park where the sun played with the fountain and made a little rainbow

And had yummy ice-cream

I found it really funny that we were all wearing one or another kind of buns held with hair sticks!

Then the hair came out

Lineup :)

This is where everyone in the park stopped and stared… Even when a group of people seemingly random walked up to a statue and started singing to it, people were still staring at us!

That’s all I have. I didn’t take many pictures, but I know other people did. I’ll post them when I get them

Sunday the 17th of April

Apparently I can’t remember to copy + paste the entries I type down…?

Anyways.

Hair was getting really greasy so I did a thorough CO wash. First I massaged the scalp with a handful of Syoss shine boost, and then wrapped the length up with Franck Provost expert reparation in the Ankylosaurus for some hours.

Then I went to CO wash again with the Syoss leftover with added water. That’s where I made a mistake. I flipped my head over the tub to rub the conditioner in and my hair instantly tangled up. That’s the one thing I absolutely can’t do to my hair: Sudden direction-changes. I think it has to do with being a coarsie; I just don’t have the same slip as the finer hair types.

For some reason its one of those hair-lessons I have a really hard time accepting and not repeating. Sigh. I know it and yet I do it from time to time. And then beat myself up over being an idiot and doing something I know will screw it up.

Well, I used the Syoss conditioner to help me detangle. Covered it all with conditioner and combed it patiently under the running water. Took a long time, but hey it gave me a good CO wash.

Finished with an ACV dip and my hair were perfectly happy, clean and shiny afterwards.

I’m wondering about the condition of my ends. The last 20 cm or so of my hair feels and reacts different than the rest of my hair. I think it’s a combination of age (9+ years) and that that part of my hair has shampooed and used harsher styling products on when I was growing it out.

Usually hair drying fast will mean that hair is healthy, because it’s not porous and can’t absorb or withhold a lot of water. My ends dry very fast lately.

The last month or two, I have been routinely spraying the ends with an oil mix and it seems to be absorbed well.

Does the oil really improve the ends health? Is it not a sign of healthy hair but perhaps the opposite? Or is it maybe that the oils absorbed are hydrophobic and expels the water?

The dumbest thing you ever did for hair

We have all done things for hair that sooner or later made us facepalm at the memory, right?

Well, my dumbest thing was that for some 3 months I slept with the foot end of my bed raised thinking it would help my hair grow.

The theory was that doing so would make more blood flow to the head and thus to the follicles.
Of course its up for discussion how stupid it was exactly. Its not like it could hurt, but it was definitely dumb.

The weird way of sleeping ended when I learned about cells and exchange of nutrients. When the cell wants a nutrient, it opens chemical channels to “grab” the nutrient from the blood cells as they pass by the cell in the blood vessels. It is not possible to force “extra” nutrients into the cells. Increasing the blood flow isn’t a bad thing of course, but its not increasing the absorption of nutrients.

We were all noobies at some point, right? 

New page is up

By popular demand by vaguely endearing creepy weirdoes, I have posted a page on what went down on LHC. I know its long, very long. But if I can ask just one thing, it is that you all read everything if you chose to venture there!

And I posted it as a page because I didn’t feel like it belonged in my blog. No negativity and unfairness in my blog please ^_^

Thursday the 8th of April

Boring post ahead…

I had a lot of work to do around the apartment but also wanted to wash my hair and deep condition. So I distributed two handfuls of Frank Provost expert repair from the shoulders down, rebraided, covered with a bag and a elastic bandage. Usually I wet my hair before doing the Ankylosaurus, but today I did it dry. Then I ignored it and went about my business for 3 hours or so.

Later I rinsed it out and did the Sexysmurf with Schwarzkopf Gliss for 2 hours while watching a movie with hubby. Rinsed that out and followed with an apple cider vinegar rinse.

As always, my hair gets slightly upset after a deep treatment, so its in a simple English braid now. Its probably because the little “scales” covering the hair strands gets disturbed by the conditioner penetrating.

Annoyances

I was taking a look on LHC today out of stupid curiosity. Like always in the last two years or so, I ended up regretting it and asking myself why I check in on a place I know end up irritating and offending me.

First thing that sprang to my eyes was a pretty negative thread on “hating” hair stylists.

But where were the attacks from the self-appointed Stylist’s Squad? No personal attacks? No name-calling? No telling OP how she made some stylist cry? No mentioning how another stylist emailed yet another stylist to tell her how she was permanently scarred by LHC now? Thread not being locked in a few hours?

How odd. When I made a thread about silly stylist advice, that was what happened to me.

(And some of the stylists who had flipped out on me later bragged how they never even had a friendly mod-warning ever)

I guess by now I really shouldn’t be surprised at how unfair LHC modding is, but some times it’s hard not to be.

Second thing that jumped at me, was that someone had linked to my biotin rant in a thread on biotin. And then someone else than attacked the first poster for having done that and obviously didn’t read a single word of my blog post.

Sad how some people are so busy being bitchy and making themselves sound better than everyone that they don’t even realise they just argued against someone who had said almost the same as themselves?

That is indeed ironic.

I’m still considering writing an entry for my blog on what went down on LHC lately.

On the “for” side is that I know the people I care about are curious, and that I know how frustrating it is to see something obviously has happened to someone I care about and whose advice and opinion I value stops posting.

On the “against” side is that I know bitchy people will project their own bitchiness into a post no matter how carefully I word it and how much I explain and how many disclaimers I make.