Getting Creative!

its sooo hard to find hats that fit when you have locs!! so i decided to make my own hat! i loom knit. (i'm actually gonna start another blog all about that,so if you're interested, keep an eye out!) i figured i could just make my own "rasta" hat. its basically a visored beanie with a deep balloon shape. it was a pain in the butt to make the hat, but i won't go into that. basically, i'm pretty please with the end result. its a bit tight! but that's my own fault. i did a really tight stitch at the bottom, which, looking back, i don't know WHY i did that! its huge! but that's a good thing. basically, i want this hat to last me a couple of winter worth of hair growth. i still haven't mastered the art of putting on a rasta hat. it takes me a few minutes of cramming my hair in the hat before i'm ready to go. that can be a pain in the butt, especially when i'm just trying to get out the door! i'm sure there must be an easier and faster way to get this hat on. we'll see. i feel kinda stupid asking people how they get a hat on their head! LOL! anyways, the hat is 20% wool, 80% acrylic. i'm not really worried about it leaving fuzzies in my hair or anything like that. i just need it to loosen up a bit so i can really enjoy wearing it!! i'll probably not sell it or make anymore to sell. it was a real pain to make this hat. i can't even imagine doing it again any time soon. and if i did make another, i would probably sell it for like 25 bucks to make up the cost of the yarn and the time spent, and who would pay 25 dollars for a hat! nobody i know! okay, so here are the pics of my first rasta hat!






i don't know why this pic is so much bigger than the rest, but, oh well! i look like i have a dinosaur head in this pic, right! LOL!!

Its Time To Fix Things Up!!

yeah... i've been really lazy about my hair. i have not done it in QUITE a while. probably not since my sister's wedding in august! i'm all for a more organic look, but its starting to be a little much for me. so i'm gonna bite the bullet and spend a whole day devoted to my hair! i'm only doing this 'cause i'm on vacation right now! LOL!! so i think i'm gonna start of with a hot oil treatment. a shampoo and condition, oil and leave in conditioners, a wet latch of my WHOLE head (that's gonna be the most nerve-wracking part!), to really rein in all those loose hairs, and i think i'll finish it off with the loc loops, which i haven't used since i bought them! but i think this times i'm gonna try to put like 4 or 5 locs on each curler for a looser curl. no more lamp chops look! i might even sit under a dryer! who knows! it will give me time to work on some of my knitting projects, at least! LOL! i'll probably post some pics of the finished product afterwards. i'm actually exited to be giving my hair this TLC. it deserves it! LOL!

Its Been Awhile!

I haven't posted anything in a while! its mostly because i've been so focused on my youtube videos. all the new revelations and good tidbits are getting posted there! but a lot has been going on in hair-land lately. i recently switched to Herbal Essences shampoo. the Hello Hydration line. i must say, i LOVE it! the shampoo is crazy thick, so i have to make sure to water it down to use it. i used to do a half water, half shampoo mix. then it mostly became 60% shampoo and 40% water, since a lot of the shampoos were thinner and i didn't feel the need to dilute them so much, but with this herbal essences shampoo, its more like 40% shampoo, 60% water! the smell is heavenly. and it makes my hair look and feel soft and shiny. it also made my hair look thicker! i'm not sure if its all in my mind or not, since they say nothing can make your hair thicker than it naturally is. and it could in part be because i have a lot of hair unlatched right now. yeah, i've been lazy. i've only been doing my hairline so i have about 1-2 inches of unlatched hair. so maybe the shampoo is really moisturizing the unlatch hair and making it puff up with hydration and that is giving me the appearance of thicker hair. who knows. my other shampoos didn't do this. so i think i've found a winner. i'm gonna stick with this shampoo for a bit. i bought the shampoo and conditioner, but i've only used the shampoo so far. i'll probably try them both when i wash later this week.
i've been really trying to streamline my hair routine. since i started making the hair oils and finding all these products, i've been going a little product crazy. but i'm really trying to cut it down to a few essentials i use on a regular basis. so what i've been doing is just a shampoo or just a conditioning no 'poo wash, not both. then some JML island oil on the scalp and some of the leave in product i used in the "Extreme Shine" post. i can't think of the name of it offhand. but anyways, i went back to Sally's and bought 10 more tubes of that stuff. i mixed two tubes of it with about 6 oz of water in a spray bottle, and after i oil my scalp, i spray that on my locs. and thats it! no more extra stuff. this routine seems to be working for me. my hair is looking healthier and shinier than ever. the non colored part is looking AMAZING!! more and more i'm questioning my decision to go back to coloring. the non colored hair just looks so much more healthy than the colored parts. do i really want to purposely damage my hair again? i'm not sure. i might actually cut off my hair where the color parts starts and just start all over with my natural color. this would also solve my long hair problem. i'm not sure. we'll see. i'm still a little scared of how that will turn out. its super hard to find anyone around here who has experience cutting and styling locs.
on to other things, i've been trying to make my own hair ties. maybe you remember from the "I Hate My Hair" post a few months back, i'm not a fan of long hair and i try to keep my hair out of my face, but hair bands, head bands, and heap wraps give me a headache, so i'm not left with much options. so, since i've been on a knitting craze (since Christmas is right around the corner and i've got NO MONEY this year!) i been knitting i-cord hair ties. i like the results so far and i've been trying to jazz them up with beads and wires and all that jazz. maybe i'll post some pics when i have it more figured out. the most difficult part of that is finding the right kind of yarn that won't frizz up and leave lint in my hair. i'll experiment with a few more different types of yarn and then i'll do a post about that later.

Pictures Cut Off

okay, so the pics in the previous post cut cut off. i'm feeling a little too lazy to go back, resize the pics, resave them, re-upload them to a wesite to get a code, and re-do the blog. so i'm just gonna do a little slide show of the pic. enjoy.

lazily yours,
lilly (LOL)

Loc Jewelry Update

i've been making more loc jewelry. but i also got inspired again, mostly by Pinky2d4, partly by some stuff i saw on about.com, and also made some matching earrings too! it was incredibly fun and mostly easy. i find the hardest part is being creative! i made a particular pair about 4 or 5 times trying to make it look "creatice and fun", and then i realized that maybe i should just settle for "pretty" right now and worry more about intricate designs when i'm more experienced! so here are the sets. i also did a youtube on it describing more of the parts and pieces i used to make the jewelry. check it out if the feeling moves you!


this is the unicorn piece. y'all know i'm nuts about unicorns! so, this, of course, is my favorite piece!



this is carnelian stone chips



and this is rose quartz. the second pic is me with the loc piece in my hair. i did a double cuff with this one, and i like how it turned out!

Shiny locs slideshow

New product and another lost loc

so i was looking in the mirror the other day, gazing at my reflection (LOL!!!) and checking out my hair, when i noticed a little lint in my loc. so i picked it out and i decided to check the rest of my head just in case. and what do i find???? one of my back locs on my hairline was CAKED with dust/dirt! it looked like these pig gray patches in my loc. so i went to work trying to pick it out, but it was just too much. so i cut the loc. i ended up cutting about 5 inches of loc off! and then i tore into the piece of loc to see just how deep the dust/dirt went, and it was all the way to the core! that really freaked me out! so then i realized that over the last year or so, i've had to cut all of the locs along my hairline in the back because of imbedded dirt. and that really made me angry. but then i relized that only the bottom parts of the locs were that nasty, so it must have happened years ago...when i was going to the salon to get my hair done!!!! for the first three years i never washed or styled or retwisted my hair myself. i had everything done at the salon! so this nastiness was THEIR fault! it made me think of all the times i was getting my hair shampooed and the girl wasn't even looking at what she was doing! she was talking to the other people in the salon while she washed my hair with one hand kinda lazily scrubbing my head. and they had the nerve to want to raise their prices! it makes me so glad i do my hair myself now!
changing subjects,
i was browsing the products in Rite-Aid the other day and guess what i found! JML anti-itch spray, which i was looking for for a while. i went into the hood to find it and they didn't have it there, but here, in this nice little small town of Roslindale where i just moved to last month, they have it here, in their tiny little black hair care section! wonders never cease! but i also found this leave-in shine treatment here's the bottle:

its 18ml. it cost under 2 dollars, i think. the texture of the liquid is a little heavier than water but definately lighter than the olive oil i use. the directions say to work through wet hair and style as usual. so i washed my hair, used about half the bottle on my hair, and did a braid out. my hair came out soooooooo shiny! it looked beautiful! its hard to get any kind of luster with locs. its just the nature of the hair. usually, if i want my hair to look shiny, i have to add a lot of oil to it and then i have to wash it the next day cause i don't want buildup. this stuff did the trick. here's some pics of how my hair looked after the treatment. the camera didn't REALLY capture how shiny and hydrated my hair looks, but you get the idea!