Sorry I'm late, I was doing my hair

Self-portrait experiment number 37

The myth that dreadlocks are low-maintenance has been debunked in my mind.  Well, it's probably safer to say that dreadlocks are like political campaigns:  you can put into them as much time and energy as you want to.

The other night I was late for a party because, for the first time in my life, I was held up doing my hair.

Are you kidding me?

I had a collision of priorities, namely:

1. Wash my hair
2. Wax my hair

It may seem simple enough to do both, but it can be screwed up.  I'd put off waxing for an extra week so my wife could focus more on blunting the tips (she felt she had the technique down, but wanted more time to have it on lockdown), so wax was on my mind.  Moreso it was hot and humid and a good waxing makes for a more party-ready appearance.

The washing, like the waxing, could have been put off a day without it being disastrous.  I'm more likely to err on the side of caution when it comes to hygiene, though, particularly since this is my first summer with matted coils of hair on my head.

So I showered, and washed my hair, and only then did I realize that I didn't have the time to let the locks air-dry.  I got busy blow-drying the hell out of them, but this was no time to be forced to master patience!  I hadn't budgeted for that extra time.

After wringing, toweling, shaking, and hot-air drying for longer than I wanted to I gave up with the locks damp, and set to waxing.  I'd have to blow-dry them again anyway.

Waxing dry locks isn't just a good idea - it's damned near the law of physics.  The wax slid off moist hair until I mashed on far more than is good for them, and my next round of blow drying was difficult because the wet hair held the heat, and burned the hell out of scalp whenever I pointed the dryer at any spot for more than about three seconds.

I moved the dryer around a lot, softening but not melting the wax.  My wife noticed, and forced me back into the bathroom where she all but held me down and gave me a stern drying so that I wouldn't look like I was wearing candles on my head.

I think the blisters should be healed any day now.

Reason #8: the wind in my hair

Once you convince a bunch of strands of hair to cooperate as a single lock, having your hair screwed with by the wind is a thing of the past.  Locks are much heavier than strands, and they just resist those pesky breezes.

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't get epic bed head.  But it's one variable which I can declare eliminated from my coiffed experience.

State of the locks

A brief report on how these locks of mine are maturing.

Rounding out two months or so, about two-thirds of my locks are definitely tightening up and becoming solid.  The remainder are in varying states of "mushy," and are mostly being held together by the base and tip bands alone.

As to the tips, we started to blunt some of them yesterday.

We tried it out on a handful, with some success . . . I put bands back on one or two but I'm pretty sure te others we tried will tighten up sweetly.

The loose hairs being fed into the locks seems to be an endless chore.  I've gotten pretty good at making dread balls, but I can't for the life of me get them into the lock without help.  I have a halo of hairs above my head, and little by little I hope to see them all go where they belong.

Trickier is going to be the flyaway stuff on the surface of the tighter locks.  Time and good advice should help me figure out if there's anything I need to be doing about them.

So far, so good.  I don't think wax is slowing my locking down, and my haberdasher bears that out.  Maureen is African-American, has had locks for twenty years, and recommends the use of wax in them.

Tips for tips

The advice keeps coming, and I'm really appreciative.  If nothing else, it's validating my experimentation.

Tame locks are happy locks

One tip I got after lamenting my epic bed head was something I had tried with remarkably good results:  soaking in a hot tub.  It got those bad boys to settle down, and stay settled for days.  I don't think I will need to use wax for cosmetic reasons if a half hour of glorious immersion will do the same thing.

That same friend of mine, who tells me that she studied locking techniques for a year before she began her first set, also suggested aloe for conditioning/taming, spoke highly of tea tree oil, and suggested a semiannual vinegar rinse as well.

This is really good news to me, because my long-term plan is to divest myself of commercial products.  The shampoo I was using prior to locking is just baking soda and water with a little bit of tea tree oil, and the rinse is apple cider vinegar with a drop of vanilla and a cinnamon stick.  I still need to find out if that drop of vanilla in the formula will cause problems, but I think it's only for scent, so I'm fine with dropping it from the recipe.

One of my local locked friends, Amanda Catherine, has really amazing blunt tips on her locks.  She explained that they come from a technique which she'd been taught, but for which she did not have a name:

1. Take a lock near the base and put it between the second and third fingers of your non-dominant hand.  Your palm should be facing away from your scalp.
2. With the fingers of your other hand, grab the lock, leaving less than an inch between the two hands.
3. Use clockwise rubbing against the non-dominant hand, slowly moving that hand away from the scalp, along the length of the lock.
4. Hold the tip between thumb and forefinger, and rub your palm clockwise over it to encourage locking and blunting.

I might try using the Lock Peppa with that technique, since that's what it's for.

Lock maintenance party!

I was also fortunate enough to get an offer of working on my locks, by one master locker and one apprentice.  It's always more uncomfortable to have other people yanking and tugging at your hair, but I gratefully accepted.  It wasn't nearly as agonizing as the six hours of backcombing.

Crisp and clean, and no caffeine

I got a few more compliments on my wife's backcombing skills, and we were able to identify which locks are slower to tighten and which ones are coming along really quickly.  I am really excited about using the latch hook my wife brought home to tighten them all the more.  She didn't think we needed a lock-specific tool; it's great to have a skilled fiber artist in the house if you don't happen to live with someone who is already experienced with dreadlocks.

I also got feedback from some of my friends who hadn't seem me since this adventure began, and I was pleasantly surprised by the positive reactions of these largely traditional, professional people.  I think the fact that I didn't look like my head was exploding had something to do with it . . . I just can't imagine anyone who isn't living on the road thinking I looked remotely decent that day.

Next up:  I've worked out a timeline for what in the hell I'm doing with this hair of mine.  If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and all that, so I'm planning on not planning to fail by failing to plan to plan.

Oh, the craziness of me

This post's title is inspired by Peter Pan ("Oh, the cleverness of me!") because I've discovered that sleeping can be hazardous to your locks, or at least it can ruin any chances of keeping them tame.  If J.M. Barrie had thought of dreadlocks, he definitely would have put them on his young hero.

Not what I would call a professional look.

The three locks which were sticking straight out from the right side of my head when I awoke yesterday morning were particularly amazing.  As they've gotten longer, I thought at first that it was the rubber bands I still have at the base of each lock which was make those particular ones so . . . pointy.  But that's not the case, because I've moved the bands around, and removed them entirely, and yet I still often wake up in this amazing condition.

The only thing I found that brought them back in line with gravity was a good, long soak in the tub.  They stayed down when I dried them, and they were still down this morning when I woke up.  This is technically a "wax on" week, but wax didn't help me beat them into shape.  In fact, there's no detectable wax in the unruly locks right now, and yet they're behaving.

This brings to mind another reaction to my locks.  "When you go in the pool, you'll look like Predator," I was told.  I imagined he meant how my hair would float in the water, but . . . not quite.  "When you get out of the water, your hair is dry," he said, which is completely the opposite of my experience so far, but maybe it will turn out that way once they're tight enough to repel moisture.

If that happens, though, washing is going to be a real pain in the ass.