Finger Latching

so, i've been latching my hair for about 3 years now... i think. maybe 4. i loose track of time. at first, i ONLY used the nappyloc tool. it was easy and fast and it was hard to mess up. then the horrible (inevitable!) day came when i lost my tool. it was bound to happen! that thing is soooo small! i tried to use a latch hook. wasn't happening. it kept on getting tangled in my hair and all i was doing was making more of a mess and hurting myself in the process. i briefly tried to use a crochet hook. but that wasn't really ever an option. so then i made my own tool using a paperclip and some electrical tape. if you look on YouTube, there are a lot of vids on how to make a homemade latching tool. it was hard getting used to it because with the nappyloc tool, you thread the entire tool through the base of your loc and that was the way i was used to latching. with the homemade tool ,you had to just thread the tip, or the eye, of the tool through the base of the loc, insert the tip of your loc, and pull through. it was a new way of doing things and it took me much longer to get through the tightening sessions. then i cut my hair and i no longer had those natural tapered tips on the ends on my locs. now i had fat, blunt tips that was even harder to thread through the tool. retightening my hair became such a pain in the butt. that was when i started migrating back to palm rolling. then i just said "bump this!" and i ordered another nappyloc tool. in fact, i ordered two! one the medium size, which was the size i originally used, and one was the large size to help deal with the fatter, blunt ends. then, not even a month later, i lost those!!!!!! i'm blaming this one of my kitten. she loves to walk around on my desk and she knocks stuff over and then she starts playing with what fell on the floor! i KNOW she took them! but, when a door closes, a window opens and i found my original too, which was actually right in the correct spot where i usually leave it. go figure! but i've been so busy with life the past few months that the last thing i wanna do when i get home is mess with my hair.

then i saw a vid by PrettyBoiShai on YouTube. she's a lochead who i've been following from her very first vid when she first began locking. she has a lot of really good stuff. anywhoo, in her vid, she showed how she does her loc maintenance by starting out with finger latching and then moving into using her homemade tool for the last few rotations. i thought this was a great idea! i messed around with finger latching in the past, but it never really looked "groomed" enough for me. i liked my parts to be neat and scalp to show. plus, i latched more often and its harder to finger latch when you only have a small amount of new growth. now i'm moving more towards a more... organic look. maybe that's not the right word. i'm just not as concerned about my locs look meticulously groomed and i'm finding that i actually LIKE the filled in look more. so, i thought, since i'm going longer in between retightenings and i have a lot more new growth at my scalp, finger latching may work better for me now. so while at work on my break, or over my friend's house hanging out, i would finger latch my locs. sitting in the car stuck n traffic, i would finger latch. watching a YouTube vid, i would finger latch. its was so easy and fast because i didn't have to fiddle around with a tool. it took about three days but it seemed so much shorter cause i was doing it in the quiet little moments of the day instead of sitting down with my water/oil spray bottle and my tool and setting aside time to "work on my hair". and my hair is done but it doesn't look "done". know what i mean? AND my locs are thicker. i did a YouTube vid about wet latching versus dry latching and one of the things i talked about was how the loc looks different when you wet latch versus dry latch. so, all in all, this was a great experience and i think i'll stick with it for the most part. i'll probably still latch the front hairline with a tool once in a while simply because those locs are smaller and i want them to look the best, but i think i'll be mostly sticking with finger latching from now on.

Pipe Cleaner Curls

it's been a while! i didn't realize it had been three months since i last posted! wow. time flies. well, in the past three months, i got married! yuppers! met my husband five years ago through eHarmony. so for all you online dating skeptics, give it a try! LOL! so, for my wedding, i tried a few different styles. its funny, i kept my hair long for so long because i wanted to be able to do some sort of fancy up-do for my wedding, and when i finally couldn't take it anymore and cut it, then we finally decided to get married! but, back on subject. i wanted curls, but i wasn't quite sure how i was gonna pull it off with short hair. i tried the braid out, but that was too informal looking. so i used the loc loops. first time it was too loose because my hair didn't completely dry. it was more like barely there waves. second time it was nice looking, but it looked better after a week when the curls started falling. then i saw one of chescaleighs YouTube vids about using pipe cleaner curls.

i've been following this girl on YouTube for years! if you haven't seen her, you should definitely check her out. she's the one who i first saw using the loc loops. she has 2 channels and some of her older vids are on the first channel, so you have to check them both out.

I've heard other people mention using pipe cleaners or straws for curls, but it all just seemed too complicated for me. i didn't see how you got the straw or pipe cleaner to stay IN your hair. thanks to the magic of YouTube, i found out exactly how to keep the pipe cleaner in your hair. my next concern was with shedding. in the vid, chescaleigh used black pipe cleaners and she has really dark brown hair. so if any of the pipe cleaner fuzz came off in her hair, it would blend in pretty well. i was using bright red pipe cleaners (brighter than my hair, if you can believe it! LOL) and if any fuzz came off, you would DEFINITELY see it. so, i asked my trusty friends on the Yahoo LovinLocs group (another gem in the locking world! get on it, people!!!!!!) and the people there reassured me that the pipe cleaners don't shed. so, with NO hair trial, the day before my wedding, i wet my hair down in the shower and went to work with the pipe cleaners. don't ask me why i didn't do a hair trial. i just KNEW the pipe cleaners would work. so here's a pic of me with all the pipe cleaners in my hair the night before.


thats me with my sister. she has a Youtube channel as well dedicated to loose natural hair.

for the front two rows, i did one loc per pipe cleaner. for the rest, it was two locs per pipe cleaner. i just wanted the front to look really defined. i looked like a crazy fool, and i ran around town doing my errands with my hair looking like that! well, i tied a scarf over the front, so from the front i just looked like a girl with a big hairstyle under a scarf, but from the back, you could see all the craziness going on under the scarf! LOL i don't have any really good pics of my hair after i took the curlers out, but here are a few of me at the wedding. you can't really see it in the pics, but i got beautiful, springy, spiral curls. the kids at my job (and a few of the adults LOL) enjoyed pulling the curls straight and then watching it bounce back into the coil shape. those curls stayed TIGHT for 2 weeks. then i got tired of them and washed them out.




yeah...i didn't keep the poofy dress on for long! that thing was HOT!!!!! LOL