Not tonight, I have to wash my hair

I washed my hair for the first time today.  Twice a week is recommended for new locks, with the suggestion that you can wash more frequently as they tighten up.  My mother washed my hair once a week and I keep to that schedule (unless something makes me grimy), so the question is going to be whether this new hairstyle attracts more dirt.

Am I a bank robber?  Only my hairdresser knows for sure.

I'm not entirely sure I did it right.  I wore a stocking on my head because the locks are still fragile, so the first challenge was getting the damned thing over my head.  When I finally stretched it out enough to fit, I felt like my skull was in a medieval torture device.  I used the dreading shampoo by washing through the stocking, and there was no sudsing at all.  There were suds when I used this shampoo just prior to dreading, so I don't know where they went. Were they sloughed off by the stocking or absorbed by the dreads?

I focused on my scalp, because that's where everything you don't want on your head tends to show up.  I scrubbed as best I could through the nylon, and squished my head around to get the soap in my hair to come out as I rinsed.

The post-shower fluffhead look

Shampooing is definitely dangerous, because with the nylon removed I can tell that there's less wax, and the locks are all much less tight.  Looking at the picture, I think that some of them may have doubled in width.

I don't think I could have done that by taking off the stocking too roughly (think there's a how-to video for that?).  Thinking on it, it's probably because the wax which is helping to compress the hair until it locks was washed out.  I guess that means that I did it right after all.

So the washing means I have to add more wax, based on the approach I'm taking to locking my hair. The debate over whether or not to use wax or not is a really fierce one, believe it or not, and it's worth a post of its own to explain the different positions and how I made my choice.  I've made it, though, and it means that I need to put wax in a lock if I can't detect any in it.  After my hair is completely dry I'll be adding a small amount of dread wax to about half of my locks. I can do it while watching television, but it's probably going to add half an hour to my hair routine on washing day, which is a lot.

The daily routine right now includes checking locks for wax, rewaxing the ones that need it (again, only if I can't feel any wax at all), and palmrolling each of them for thirty seconds, or a minute for the rewaxed locks.  Eventually I will be using wax only every other week, and mature locks have no need of it, so the time requirements drop off.  I won't be washing my hair any less, and with the time requirements I sure as hell hope I don't have to wash it more.

Drying takes more time, too.  I prefer shorter hair because I can quickly towel it and let it air dry, and that takes longer now.  I also find that my scalp itches while it's drying.  I don't think I will start using a blow dryer, but I can't put a hat on wet dreads so the time factor could force my hand if I have to be somewhere. Especially when they're fluffy like this, I'd prefer to keep them covered in a lot of circumstances.  I'm a journalist, and it would be a distraction if my hair became the story.

Coming soon:  a video from dread day.  I have the link to the Flip video and should have time to figure out how to edit it together soon.