Sheer Laziness...

..has kept me from doing a natural clarifying and deep conditioning that is well overdue at this point. I have had the necessary ingredients for some time now, so I really need to just set aside some time and DO IT ALREADY!! I have read that DC's are the life of natural hair and should be done on a weekly basis, so no time like the present to get started.

Tonight, I will be clarifying with a Betonite Clay hair mask and following that up with an Avocado/Honey DC..all made from natural ingredients. I hope to be able to post pics of the process and the results but I let my sister borrow my camera, and of course it was damaged while in her care *sigh* ...so we shall see..

Shrinkage

I don't know if I should even be worried about this problem yet, but I am for some reason. I'm not sure really what my "hair type" is but I think it's a mix of 4a/4b and the shrinkage is outta control. It's really hard to be patient with this whole growing out process, because it kinda looks like my hair isn't growing AT ALL when I know it is. I would say that my hair looks about 75% shorter than it really is and I am clueless as to how I can get the curls to stretch a little. I am tempted to try Miss Jessie's products but my budget tells me otherwise; I am trying like mad to not become a product junkie...and most of the products that I try have to be $5 or less. It makes absolutely no sense to go natural only to spend huge amounts of money trying every product under the sun, but this shrinkage issue is getting on my nerves and I am *this close* to shelling out some cash to see if I can find something that works. Anyone with a 3-4 inch TWA got any suggestions? I am about to get in the kitchen and start mixing stuff of my own at this point.

Twist and Shout

As promised, here are the results of my very first twist out. I opted to do twists over the finger coils for some reason...don't ask me why :) This was an enlightening experience to say the least... I learned a lot about what my hair can and cannot do/likes.

I started by shampooing with Creme of Nature Shampoo for Dry and Damaged Hair (green and white label); not that my hair is dry or damaged, but I love detangling with this shampoo more than any conditioner that I have tried so far. It makes the knots just melt away under the little shampoo-scalp scrubber thingy...you know..the one with the short teeth that they use at the salons...my TWA is loving that thing now. I can imagine it won't work quite as well once as my hair grows back.

Then I conditioned with HEHH (mentioned in my previous post) and left some of that in with some soybean oil. Yep..I said soybean oil, also known as common vegetable oil. I'd used some before to remove some hair glue and the bottle was just chillin with the rest of my hair oils, so I gave it a spin. It worked quite well actually and became a staple of mine for a few weeks, until I rediscovered my bottle of Kemi Oil...more on that later, but Kemi Oil is the ish..

So with the conditioner and oil applied, I twisted random sections of hair, parting with my fingers as I went. My hair twists very easily and also "sets" very quickly. I didn't like the turnout on my hair b/c it is so short and I am not a fan of scalp showing through my curls..so I will keep this in my arsenal for later, once I get some length. I do need to think of some TWA stying options b/c it is quickly starting to look a little bit like a Jerri-curl as it grow and that is *so* not the business. I wonder if I can pull of a mini fro-hawk...hmm.. I wonder..