Washing

I always love seeing my hair floating in the length of the tub when I wash. It moves around as the water pushes it and the ends almost look like flames in the wind.

I got my darling hubby to take a picture of it but I guess it’s hard to catch the true effect.

  

Stylist speculations

When I decided I wanted to get some trims done, I had happily forgotten one important detail: It requires me to actually go to a stylist.

Crap.

I don’t trust them. I really don’t.

Back before I started growing my hair out again and I didn’t care that much, they always wanted to “add layers for movement” or “thin it out”. Ugh. Even back then I knew my hair well enough to know that ended in a giant unruly puff-ball. One length blunt cut has always been the best for me. Some times I wondered if it’s because Danish stylists are trained on the dominant hair type of volume-challenged thin and fine and it’s because my thick coarse hair is so rare for a native Dane, but maybe not. On LHC there was an abundance of threads on traumatic cuts, “add layers for movement” and “thin it out” no matter location and hair type.

I have been lucky enough to avoid traumatic cuts, but I have still experienced enough of them to know that they don’t know anything about hair and the only thing that stands between them whacking off half my mane is my half-scowling-I’m-watching-your-every-move-look. I guess I have a way of radiating “I won’t pay you if you get “artsy” and I will make a scene”. Hah.

Even then I always ask them to show with their fingers how much they think xx cm is. They always show at least double and I always push their fingers together until they show how much xx cm actually is. Yep, I can be a condescending bastard, but it still blows my mind how often they mistake 2 cm for 5. Seriously. You would expect a 5^th grader to be able to show that, but stylists fail it Every. Single. Time.

So far my attitude has saved me from any scissor happy accidents, although I had two minor bad cuts.

• One was back when I had maybe 3 cm of hair on my head and I went to get the bottom cut to get away from the uncharming microphone-head look and make it look like it was actually a haircut. After the stylist had trimmed from the ears and down, she took a few cuts into the top as well. It was just a few quick snips that most of all seemed random and I didn’t get to stop her. I still wonder what the heck she was doing. Some sort of idea of thinning it out maybe?
• The second was when the top hair had reached about mouth length and I asked to get the back cut back to the level of my neck hair line. The stylist used a trimmer in the back of my neck and I thought she removed some fuzz or something but no. She actually removed the bottom of my hairline. I had an extreme case of mushroom-head for a month after that. Uff!

I had two experiences with bad use of equipment…

• Back when I had an ugly mullet-y thing and wanted to cut the hair in the back, the stylist placed me under some sort of rotating heater/blower thing set on such high heat that it made the skin on my shoulders hurt!
• At around classic length I went for a trim and when I shook my hair out, the stylist wanted to take a brush to my hair to detangle! One of those wide paddle brushes where the “teeth” looks like little nails with a head hammered into the cushion pad. To make it even worse, she reached directly for my scalp hair! Sheesh. Even pre-school girls know you detangle from the bottom and work up!

I got a bunch of more or less bizarre advice too…

• “This permanent colour isn’t damaging!” Gag.
• “Your hair can’t grow any longer than it was when you were 12!” I don’t even begin to understand this one! So the information on how long your hair was when you were 12 is somehow saved in the follicle and it can never grow beyond that?
• “You must colour your hair to the colour it was when you were 12! That is the most flattering colour for you!” What’s the obsession with the age of 12? And seriously, like almost all leverpostej (That too dark to be blonde and too light to be brown-colour that is extremely common here) I was blonde as a child and darkened with age. If I bleached my hair to the golden blonde I had then, I would look like an onion with ears. No thanks!
• “Your hair is so thick, we should thin it out” Yea, just what I need. The sexy pipe-cleaner look for my braids. And more volume.
• “Your hair is so thick, you must have a lot of scalp problems and dandruff!” Huh? Because hair doesn’t allow air to circulate or something? Or is it like if you’re very tall, you will definitely have foot fungus? What?!
• Not a hair advice but still, fresh from the stylist’s mouth: “You should always pluck your eyebrows in the direction you want the hair to grow. It will grow out that way next time the hair comes out.” Does this work on cowlicks too? I think a lot of people would love if that worked!
• Stylist: “You should colour your hair this colour!” *Shows picture* Me: “But that’s just a tiny bit blonder what mine is already” Stylist: “Yes but it will deepen and intensify your natural colour!” Ehh…? So I should damage my hair by colouring it to almost the same colour as it is already?
  
• The classic “We should add layers for movement” even though my hair is always up. Of course this would end in a lot of volume which I definitely don’t need.

Zoom out

A bigger version of the previous picture… It involves a bit of skin and an annoying hubby trying to avoid getting elbowed (Hence my expression) in the face so I had to crop it a lot

          

Regrowth progress

I experienced a very sneaky shed from stress and depression about 3 years ago. When I say sneaky, I mean that I didn’t even know I had it until I saw the irritating halo from regrowth. I probably lost just a few extra hairs per day which is nothing even the most eager and attentive longhair would notice.

The regrowth in total is about the thickness of a finger if I gather it all up, so I lost quite a bit!

It has been a giant pain in the ass to deal with the halo and right up until I could get it into a ponytail and hold it in with the up do, I’ve been very dependant on headbands.

Now that the majority of it is shoulder length, I barely notice it.

I had some strands poking out of my braid today in a kind of cute way and took a picture of it.

My mane looks really impressive when I zoom in on it like this, heh!

1 year’s blog birthday

Well, actually the blog has existed for longer than that since I spent a day or two setting up stuff, but my first post was a year ago!

So happy birthday to my blog!

   
When I first started this blog I didn’t have many expectations, after the whole LHC fiasco I just wanted to move my blogging to a more independent site. (Some times regretting the choice of Blogger when the comments option acts up but done is done)

I really didn’t expect much. After all, it took me years to build a reputation as being worth listening to and I didn’t expect people to get used to visit my private blog (Or be able to find it)

It was a really pleasant surprise to see my little blog grow over the months.

Now one year later I have 231 posts with this one, 50 followers and over 50 thousand page views in total!

I’m very happy and surprised, so thank you to all my followers! You are what make blogging worth it!

Oh and just because I find it a bit amusing, here is my traffic overview up to today… What’s with the weird spike around April?

Build up question

After revisisting the articles I can find on the subject and generally poking about on forums and blogs now taking into account information on the different properties of different types of silicone. Looking at the sunsilk leave in I know we both use it contains both dimethicone and amodimethicone. Now amodimethicone is in itself not water soluble but together with trideceth-12 it is and since sunsilk contains trideceth-12 it should be removed just fine (according to the sources I used). However, dimethicone which is also in the sunsilk leave-in balm isn't water soluble. I notice other people write about clarifying in order to remove dimethicone build-up but you've never mentioned clarifying your hair, yet you don't seem to experience problems from build-up, how do you solve the build-up issue, and how often do you have to deal with it?

~msn00b

It’s pretty simple…

I solve the build-up issue by not having a build-up issue.

Honestly, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve had to clarify and still have fingers to spare.

The times when I’ve had to clarify has all been ”back in the day” where I was new to the whole longhair circuit and was way too eager to condition and care for my hair.

It’s been some expensive lessons a few times: Once back when I had shoulder length hair I had used a coconut oil-leave in thing (Think Palmers Coconut something-something?) that got super greasy and weird in my hair. I then used shampoo to get it out, but it didn’t seem to work on the first round, so I shampooed again. Then it just got even worse! I swear, somehow the fatty coconutty-coney thing fused with the cones in the Fructis shampoo I used and turned into some sort of disgusting lumpy super-coconutty-coney-greaseball. Yikes! I shampooed and shampooed and eventually emptied the bottle and had to go to bed with greasy-icky hair and run to the store next morning to get a clarifying shampoo. I had to shampoo nine times in all to get my hair back to normal! My scalp felt completely fried after that.

Well, I learned my lesson on over-conditioning healthy hair then.

It wasn’t until I was at around waist length before my hair even accepted any kind of oil or protein without flipping out on me.

Coarse hair has an extra layer (That is what makes coarse hair coarse) and it makes it difficult for oil and protein to penetrate, so they just “sit there” and can mess up the texture of the hair. It seems that coarse hair simply needs to take some damage before it will accept oils and protein. Not sure it’s a good thing I can oil my hair now!

Of course I knew people were saying that, back then but I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to try all these cool new things, especially this coconut oil that everyone seemed to love so much!

The whole “Benign Neglect” that the super long hairs always praised just seemed so boring. Hah, now I’m being one of them too.

Now I condition 0-2 times a week, usually in connection with having to wash my scalp. It’s obviously not enough to cause build-up or other issues for my hair type.

I try to add some more care to my ends since they can “take” more conditioning than the roots by doing an  Ankylosaurus without the heatpack overnight. It works really well. My ends love the extra care and I don’t upset the top and risk over conditioning it.

So well, boring anecdotes aside my answer is: If you don’t overdo conditioning, cones or no cones, you don’t have to clarify.

Skin speculations

I’m really not sure what to think of the La Roche-Posay skin care line (Now there’s a brand name I will never, ever be able to remember!) that I have been using for two weeks or so now.

On one hand, I think the tendency for my skin to be red and irritated has gone down a bit and it looks a bit better, but…

About half the times when I apply the skin tonic and cream, my skin feels “flushed” and irritated for about a minute. That is definitely not a good sign. In my opinion there are only two times where redness and irritation is not a bad sign: After an exfoliation where the skin has been mechanically manipulated and after a mud mask where the skin is irritated after having been dried out or having the pores opened and gunk hauled out.

Redness when applying cream does not mean that the product is working! Redness means that the skin hates the product!

Also I have a breakout coming right at the left side “bend” on my jaw line. As someone who gets maybe one normal zit per year on average, this is definitely a warning sign. Especially since it’s been there for a day or two and it doesn’t seem to be “squeeze ready” yet. I’m worried it might be a cystic mo-fo in the making… Yikes.

I have experience one of those many years ago in a crazy moment of “Hey, let’s take a handful of B vitamins to grow the hair faster!!!1!” and it was unbelievably uncomfortable and disgusting.

Strangely with those two big fat warning signs, my skin generally seems to be doing better. Huh?!