Silly little random find share of the day

Totally cute, but will definitely not work for my hair length!

My hubby is awesome!

I can’t always figure out how hubby feels about my hair obsession and my blogging. I know he likes my hair very much but I think he finds it slightly weird that I never shampoo and that I spend a lot of time searching for information and new tools and toys.

I think his opinion on the whole blog can be summed up with what he said the first time he learned about it: “You write about your hair? And you have people reading about your hair?”. Mildly confused amusement indeed.

He takes my pictures without complaining and some times comes up to me when I’m writing and asks me what I’m writing about. But when it comes to me replying or when I start a conversation about my latest obsession, I always had a feeling he was just keeping a polite smile on top of his mildly confused, mildly uninterested amusement.

Well, today my darling hubby proved that he actually does pay attention and does care!

Look what was among our packages:

     

Slight delay of plans

I had planned to take some god length shots of my hair to celebrate the ten years ”birthday” but my dedicated photographer is currently propped up in bed with my heat packs and all the covers I could find.

Poor hubby!

He is really, really sick and pathetic. I hope he will feel better soon so he won’t have to celebrate Christmas in bed with a bowlful of soup instead of the delicious food I’m going to prepare.

Happy ten years “birthday” to my hair

It's 2 in the morning right now, so it’s officially my hairs 10 years "birthday". 10 years since I shaved my head!

Time flies!

Hah, if someone had told me those ten years ago that I would end up growing to knee length hair, I would have laughed.

Funny how things goes.

Back then I just wanted to get rid of the crappy lemon damage and try something new. Then I wanted to grow it long enough to go in a ponytail…Then into a braid…Then into a bun…Then into a knotty bun…Then into a braided Nautilus.

It sneaks up on you, the hair.

  

       

Right now I’m more interested in the Christmas preparations. Hubby is off at work and I would like to have finished some of it before he comes home so we can enjoy a relaxing and stress free Christmas.

I’m giving my hair a new comb and some argan oil for its “birthday” and Christmas.

Live and learn

I have been encouraged by people to do a YouTube channel for many years but have been hesitant to do it for a number of reasons

• I personally don’t care much for the video format when it comes to leaning new hairstyles. I prefer photo tutorials and will skip embedded videos when I read blogs or forums.
• The hair channels seems to be crawling with disgusting hair fetishists and I have no desire to cater to a crowd that routinely steal mine and other longhairs pictures and posts them as their own (Some even put a © on stolen images. Seriously.)
• There are so plenty of good channels (A million bad ones too) so I would have very little to “offer” anyways.
• YouTube comments are where brains go to die.
• Maybe my biggest argument is that it seems there is a world of difference in the reactions between photos and videos. On picture tutorials you will see a vast majority of positive reactions although you will always have the occasional “I don’t get it?!1” on a crystal clear how-to. Even when someone posts pictures of horribly abused hair, people have the heart to post encouraging comments and helpful hints. Videos? OMG the criticism! Viewers even act like you should be appreciative they took the time to post how much they hated the videos.

Since most people seemed to have been perfectly happy with my pictures and picture tutorials, what the [bleep] was I thinking staring a YouTube channel?

I just wanted to prove my philosophy that long hair is easy and versatile is true and that knee length hair really isn’t that much work or trouble.

I thought by disabling ratings and comments on the video, people would get the hint that I wasn’t interested in criticism. In the last work I put in on the video I thought of mentioning in the long braiding sequence (That I didn’t speed up because I wanted to show exactly how long/short it takes to braid my knee length hair) that I didn’t want comments or criticism. I changed my mind because it felt “provocative” to order people around like that. I decided to put in the text about how uncomfortable it makes me feel to be watched and felt it would explain that I’m insecure about the whole thing.

Guess that was a humongous fail to assume people would get that?

So based on the criticism I received in the blog comments and on my email, I should change… Everything. That’s right; my first attempt of a video was such a horrendous eyesore that there is nothing likeable about it.

(I especially “enjoyed” the complaints about Bloggers comment feature. Because that is something I can change, right? That’s Bloggers issue and I can’t do a damn thing about it.)

So yea, apologies to the sweet people who encouraged me and who genuinely just wanted to see me handle my hair, but I think this will be my first and last video.

Speaking of sweetness I have this one to mail today. I had planned on getting something from one of the little specialty chocolate stores in the city and figured if I was out early, I wouldn’t be trampled by the Christmas-stressed crowd. Well, it turned out that everyone else had the very same idea?! Wow. Seriously, they need to find a way to weaponise those vicious old ladies with their strollers. Ow.

First real video

I love my friends :) (And I complain too much?)

Biologist friend is in America to celebrate Christmas with her family. She just emailed me asking if I wanted her to bring some hair products home for me. Uhm, let me think; Yes. Yes please.

I’m deducting three things from this:

1)      My friends are awesome

2)      My friends know me too well

3)      I complain too much about the lack of selection in hair products here
        

Shock, awe and a recommendation

I’ve been hunting for argan oil for some weeks now. The magical oil that seems to be the biggest hype among my fellow longhairs at the moment.

The main problem has been the price. Even mixed products with just a small amount of argan oil is ridiculously expensive. Well, of course “ridiculously expensive” is very subjective, but being a long haired weirdo has made me really aware of prices. Why would I use a 200 kroner conditioner when a 20 kroner one is just as perfectly good at making my hair glossy and soft?

The argan oil prices make me cringe.

I’ve been searching the net for a few weeks both on Swedish and international sites and came to the conclusion than 50 ml goes for around 200 kroner. That’s 244 Swedish kronor, 35 USD and 27 Euro.

Today I looked at a Danish online health shop called Duft og Natur that I have ordered from a lot in the past. I really like that shop. They have good prices and have been effective and friendly to me. Of course now that I live in Sweden, I have a problem with shipping from them since they don’t ship outside of Denmark. Pout.

I poked around a bit and had one of those moment where you feel you should have a sound effect in the background with screeching tired and glass shattering.

They have an organic argan oil for 99,75 kroner. For 100 ml!!

I could barely believe my eyes. That’s a quarter the price of the other products I have considered ordering! I ended up calling the place and asked if it really was a pure product and got confirmed that yes, that is in fact a pure argan oil… 100 ml for 99,75 kroner!
That’s 121 Swedish kronor, 17,5 USD and 13,4 Euro.

Is it just me or is that really, really cheap?

I ordered 3 bottles.

Yep, 3.
   

                               

I’m now anxiously awaiting the package to arrive at my parents’ home in Denmark so they can send it to me
So consider this a hot recommendation to everyone reading this; All Danes and everyone who knows a Dane who could send it to them! At this price, even with shipping it would be cheaper than the vast majority of options out there.

Ropebraid

When I took the Nautilus bun out yesterday the rope braid was still looking pretty good. Guess I finally got the hang of that one.

Today’s hair

Rope braided Nautilus bun.

I’m really not on friendly terms with the ropebraid. I feel I can never get it “packed” as tightly and firmly as I want my braids to be and it doesn’t have the same stabilising feel as a regular braid put up has.

I think the end result looks fairly nice although I’ll admit I shamelessly took the picture from the best angle and side!

Now I just need to keep myself from messing around with it.
Do… Not…Touch…The…Updo!!

  

Shampooed

I went to bed last night with super greasy hair. Decided I just couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it.

I woke up to something really upsetting. Those who are members at UTT can read about it here.

After things had been “solved” I headed for the shower to clean the grease ball. It felt like such a huge task to clean the disgusting mess with conditioner only!

  

So for the first time this year, I reached for a bottle of shampoo.

   

I went with Franck Provost because it looked cone free. I’ll admit I’m not an ingredient expert, but what I could see it didn’t contain any.

I figured using a cone free shampoo followed with a heavy deep treatment would work well.

  

  

My hair felt awful after the shampoo! Dry, cranky and tangly.

It made me realise why they put cones in shampoo and wonder how I could shampoo my hair 2-3 times a week and think it felt good!

   

  

Then I mixed up a treatment using some leftovers: Garnier Respons with avocado oil and shea butter (Far right) and Elvital volume collagen

  

   

And filling up with a bit of Franck Provost expert repair conditioner. Left it in a Sexysmurf for about two hours.

   

My hair felt really good afterwards, but I’ll have to keep an eye on my scalp to see how it reacts!

The comb search goes on

It’s been a week since I emailed Creative combs about their failure of a website and inability to ship an order. They haven’t responded at all, so I’m going to order combs from the place that Forgetful recommended: Hairsense.

Even though my intension was to order combs, I find myself tempted by

A massage brush. Would this be useful for washing maybe?

And the natural bristle brushes. I never owned a real quality brush and the natural bristle brushes always seem to be highly praised.

I like the looks of this handle rake, but it's really big. Almost the size of my Ric the Combmaker comb that feels huge, almost unmanageable.

This one is slightly smaller and looks more handy.

And this super detangle rake is even larger than the Ric-comb! It looks like it could be a useful one for shower-purposes and distributing conditioners.

This handle rake and this detangler would be useful as a comb for putting my hair up.

This one would maybe work well to be used in the shower for distributing conditioner. Or would it be too wide-toothed to work at all? Does anyone have experience with the super wide-toothed combs? I think I’ll put a thread up on UTT asking for experiences…

Well, that didn’t go as planned…

My scalp continues to be flaky and irritating. I must admit I don’t entirely understand it: It’s been so rainy and wet outside for weeks that even with the heat cranked up inside, the moisture should still seep in, right? My scalp shouldn’t be suffering from a dry climate, should it? It’s not that cold outside either, yet.

I don’t get it.

Anyways. I thought I was clever last night: Instead of CO washing to get the damned flakes off; I decided to do a scritching. That seems to be the most commonly used term for manipulating the dry scalp to loosen up scalp gunk. So using my fingertips, comb, brush, fingernails and this “octopus” massage thingie I cleaned my scalp of the flakes before brushing them out of the length.

I felt really clever.

Today my scalp is intensely greasy. Yep. Figures: The long manipulation yesterday really stimulated it to release sebum. So now I can either make peace with being a total greaseball, or I can do the wash I was hoping to avoid.

Touché, scalp.
     

I love getting mail :)

Seriously, receiving a package in the mail feels like getting a visit from this guy:

 

 

Doesn’t matter much what the package actually contains ^^ Still feels like Christmas

  

Well, my mailbox today contained this

  

The secret item will remain secret because it’s going to someone I know reads my blog and I don’t want to ruin the surprise!

    

   

The little box on the right contains a bunch of the cards shown in the front and the red thingie is a stamper thing with “Betald”- the Swedish word for “paid” that I figured we could use for bills XD

   

    

I love the cards with the beautiful design made by the very talented Madison!

   

    

Had to stick one of the stickers on the first best thing XD

  

  

I’m pissed off at the crappy job they did with the pens. On the website with their design tool it showed the design being wrapped entirely around the pen and taking up all the white area. In real life though… Bleargh! 

Snugly warm winter head of the day

I had a bunch of errands to run and it’s cold, wet and windy outside so I needed to keep my head warm.

   

  

Hair up in a braided nautilus

Then I put a pre-tied bandanna over it

I intended it only as an extra layer, but it turned out to be really great for keeping the hat from sliding back or budging in the whipping wind. I see the point of an underscarf for a hat!

Even though this blue one is the beanie I feel fit over my head and bun the best, it still looks really weird. I guess normal hats just aren’t meant to conceal a cantaloupe-sized bun? Hah

It does get better once I get a coat and my headphones on though

I kept warm and comfortable so I will definitely do this again!  

Testing

Apologies for the very lame upload, but since it’s my first try with creating videos and uploading them to Youtube, I thought I would give it a very simple test run to get used to how things work.

Hair happiness graph

A rather random and geeky little thing I made yesterday while chatting with Little Orca.

Not entirely sure how much explanation it requires but…

• I liked the short hair on me. 5 o clock shadow to eyebrow length looked really good. It still took some product and shampooing every night, but it was a good-looking length.
• Then it started to lie down in weird patches and falling into my eyes, nose and mouth and it required constant gelling or headbands to not drive me insane. Argh!
• Once it hit flip length and was long enough to be whipped up in a ponytail and I could easily get it out of my face, my happiness with it kept increasing.
• Then I hit about mid thigh and outgrew my reach. Huge drop in happiness that I didn’t see coming at all! It made my handling so much more difficult and I had to adapt to it.
• My conclusion on outgrowing “Reach Length” was that it doesn’t matter if my hair is 2 cm or 20 cm longer than I can reach; it makes all handling and care a lot more difficult. But now that I have gotten used to it, my happiness with my hair is slowly increasing again.

(I guess I should include a small “jump” now that I’ve reached the illusive knee length. Classic to knee has been really slow and frustrating)

    

Tuesday very early morning

Just had a total girly hour with mud mask, wax, eyelash dye and some fun with the hot pink dye I got from Umphie. I put a bit of coconut oil in my hair yesterday and just let the leftovers rinse out. It feels soft and nice too.

I placed the order at vistaprint for business cards with my blog address and a few other things some days ago. I’m extremely unimpressed with the company and the ordering process and wont be ordering with them ever again no matter how well the result turns out. I have a strong dislike for hidden fees and feeling lied to. Of course they make it sound so easy in the ads but in reality, you have to pay extra for anything and everything. It even cost extra to use your own design! Why, I can’t figure out. I know I’m not in the printing business, but I can’t see why my own design would be more difficult or costly to print than the ones you just fill contact information in. It has to be the same number of colours/ink you use and you have to re-set the entire thing after each print, right? Weird. I probably won’t receive them until after Christmas: I was so fed up with the hidden fees upon hidden fees upon hidden fees that I opted for the cheapest processing and shipping. Bah, they can kiss my behind.

I have been trying to make videos for my new youtube channel, but can’t figure it out. I “shoot” the video just fine, but when I try to edit it in windows movie maker the entire video is black/blank even though it plays perfectly fine anywhere else. It’s very strange and super frustrating! Of course there is no help to find anywhere online, argh.

I’m going to place an order with the place that Julya recommended, Creative hair tools:

This one

And this one

And this one too even though they don’t write how large it is. It looks like the kind of wide toothed comb I want, but it could be very, very small. Well, if it is, it will go in my shoulder bag. I could use having a good comb with me.

Also going to order the argan oil they have on the site.

Edit: Well, Creative hair tools turned out to be a big fat fail. When I’m checking out, I get the message:

"You Spent Over $50. Click Here for Free Shipping.

This shipping method is currently unavailable. If you would like to ship using this shipping method, please contact us."

But I can’t pick free shipping and I can’t pick any other option at all. I have no problem in paying for shipping but I do have a big problem with irritating and useless websites.
I sent them an email even though I honestly don’t feel like bothering and would rather order from another place now.

Today I feel like Goldilocks

Hubby and I were going to a Christmas dinner with some friends. I wanted to do something cool to my hair instead of the usual braided Nautilus bun held with a Flexi that it’s always in. So I decided on a figure 8 bun held with one of my cooler hair sticks.

So, it went up in a figure 8 bun and I stuck a Timberstone Turnings stick I got from Hypnotica in. It is so big it kept either poking me in the neck or poking up like a giant weird antenna. Hm.

  

   

I decided against it and put in a hair sword I got from Fatamorganna. That one kept poking me in the neck too and it’s pretty sharp! I angled it more after taking the picture and then it wasn’t Hubby-safe anymore. He has the memory of a moth circling a flame when it comes to remembering I have sharp things in my hair!

  

   

I liked the idea of a hairsword though and took a wooden one I also got from Hypnotica. That felt more right. It’s not any sharper than a hairstick so the poking in my neck was tolerable and it was relatively Hubby-safe too.

  

  

But after taking the picture, I tried adjusting it a little and…

*Crack*

Dammit.

   

  

Okay. Sigh. In went that Flexi that I had tried to avoid.

   

  

And finally, a woollen hat over to protect my hair and scalp from the sun, wind and cold.

   

Soft city

I’ve been slightly unhappy with my ends for a while. Even though I haven’t been able to spot any actual damage, they have kept feeling a bit Velcro-ish no matter how much I S&D. I’ve been looking forward to a real actual trim!
  

But now that my hair is almost dry in a braid, my ends feels awesome, great, and fantastically soft!

   

I have never been a fan of Respons because of the distinct and lingering scent of honey, but the mix of the regular conditioner and a bit of the deep treatment with avocado oil sure worked wonders on my ends! Wow. I need to remember this!

SexySmurf II

I find myself a bit pressed for time tonight. I want to do a deep conditioning but I have to run a test creation of a traditional Danish desert. Hubby and I are meeting with some of my friends on Saturday for a Christmas dinner-thing and I want to bring a Danish Christmas desert called Risalamande. It’s a very tricky thing to make; If done right it’s a deliciously smooth and creamy “fluffy” mousse kind of desert, if done wrong it turns into a lumpy, heavy and much too sweet porridge. A lot of Danes will say they don’t like the desert at all because they have only experienced the lumpy, sweet and heavy kind.   

My mother is really good at making it right, but her recipe is of the “A bit of this, a dash of that, a splash of this” kind and that makes it completely useless to me. Some research into more modern variations and methods to create this desert and now I just need to test make it to see how it works.

 
But all this kitchen work is too much to do a deep conditioning during. Although my SexySmurf is good at keeping me comfortable while I do something else during a deep conditioning, it’s not completely tension headache-proof. After all, like I proved before, it’s a lot of weight piled up on your skull!
  

I had the idea some time ago to use an elastic bandage to keep it all under control and it works quite well. Wrap the bandage around the head and up over the “bun” to keep it squished down. I need a bit of work on the “pattern” though

    

     

No matter how practical this one is, I always think that that SexySmurf is the very definition of “totally unsexy"!