Meet the baby!

so i started another loc!!!! its just so cute and tiny! it makes me smile whenever i look at it! basically my loctician who started my hair thought that the two locs at my temples were too tiny for palm rolling and she joined them with nearby locs. but now i latch and i've been having a lot of trouble with the loc on my left temple in particular. the bed where the loc comes from is too wide and the shorter temple hair kept escaping from the loc giving me a frizzy hairline. and if i tried to manhandle that hair back into the loc, it hurt and in the end, it would just pop out later! so after i washed my hair yesterday, i just pulled all that loose hair away from the loc. its was all crinkly and soft. so i gave it a little twirl around my finger and this perfect, tiny, little coil formed immediately! its just so cute! so i decided to leave it. now i have a baby loc at my temple. its going to be smaller than my other ones. and it might not ever get that long. but i love it! maybe even more than the other ones (but don't tell them that!!!! LOL!) here are a few pics of it. i know i took waaaaaayyy more than was necessary! you can't blame me, i'm a proud mama!!!

here she is with my hair down as normal. see her?!


and here are some close ups

Curly Ends

i've heard a lot of people recently voice concerns about their curly ends. well, some people. some people love it and keep their ends unlocked and curly on purpose. its a pretty look. but other people have concerns about it. well, i just wanted to say, relax. i've had locs for 6 years. my hair is grade 4b/4c. so, basically, i have the kinkiest, "nappiest" grade of hair there is...and i still have curly, unlocked ends! not on all my locs, mind you. just about ten to fifteen of them. its really apparent when i use a conditioner in my hair. i have one right in the middle of my head that has a good three inches of unlocked hair at the tip. and most of the ends make little curly-q's. but some are just puffs of hair. i've been twisting them around my fingers to try to get them to at least make a little curly-q, and it seems to be working so far. but my point is, it's perfectly normal.
i also tend to lose little, tiny clumps of hair from these unlocked, unsealed ends. again, more so when i use a conditioner. but that doesn't really worry me either. i know its just the shed hair that was trapped in the loc for so long that's falling out.
but if you're one of the people who is really worried about this and it bothers you, then there is a video on youtube by prettyboishai. she shows you how to use a crochet hook to make the ends of your locs round, and in the process, you tie up those loose curly ends. its a really helpful vid.

Oh Youtube, How I Love Thee!

my company holiday party was yesterday (late january, you ask? yes, we always do it around this time. apparently its cheaper). we go on a three hour cruise around boston harbor on The Spirit of Boston. free food, free drinks, free guest, free parking! anyways, i got out of work at 4:30 and we had to start boarding by 7:30. three hours is not a long time to get ready when an hour of that time is already eaten up with the commute to my house and the commute to the boat! i ran home, washed and conditioned my hair ( i would have just washed, but this winter air is making my hair sooooo dry! i have to condition almost every time now!) and started to put the loc loops in when i realized that almost an hour had passed and there was no way on God's green earth i would have time to sit under the dryer, pick out my clothes, get dressed, and get the make-up on. so what was i going to do with my hair!! it was wet still with NO time to even consider the dryer. i had to do some sort of style!
so i went to my ever faithful mistress, youtube!! i remembered seeing a vid by one of the ladies i subscribe to. she has micro braids and she did this video on cute ponytail styles. i had to slightly modify her style because my hair is just too bulky and too many different lengths to do the bun she did in the vid, but the criss cross in the front was BANGIN'!!!!

you can find her vid here

and here is me with the hairstyle. please excuse the quality of the pics, i had to use my phone cause the battery on my camera died

that little glittery thing up top is a jeweled flower pin i stuck in to make sure the locs wrapped around the ponytail didn't unravel








and here's a pic of me in my sister's car, all dolled up on the way to the party!

YAY! I Used A Latch Hook!

so i finally, FINALLY did my hair. i didn't do the hot oil or the conditioner and all that, but i did it! i went through all of Thanksgiving and Christmas, all the parties and gatherings, with a frizzy, puffy hairline. i just but a headband on and kept it going. but i had to go to a funeral for a close friend's mother, and i thought "enough is enough! time to get this done!". so i latched my hair on Tuesday. by Thursday i noticed i had missed some hair and i had some little tufts of hair sticking up on the top of my head! i was a little concerned cause i had JUST latched my hair! it was tight to my scalp and there was no way i would be able to gather the loose hair and do another rotation with the nappy locs tool. so i got inspired by an update vid i saw on YouTube by a girl named PrettiBoiShai. she had recently used a latch hook to tighten her entire head and she is a new locker, has no previous experience with using a latch hook, and her hair came out looking nice. so i thought, i have to give this latch hook another try. so i did it, and it worked! i used the latch hook to pull just the the loose hair into the loc shaft. it was a wonderful, mostly easy solution to a pestering problem! i'll probably use this technique more often when i have those fly-aways along my hairline in the future. i'm veeeeeeerrrrrry happy. i did a vid with a demonstration, but i'm having trouble posting it to YouTube right now, and its too large to post on here. hopefully i'll get that figured out soon.

Yeah...

...that hair day never happened! then i said, you know what, I'll just do it on Friday night. but Friday was my first day back at work from vacation. because I'm such a night owl, i was all off schedule. so when i got home Friday, i crashed! i intended to take an hour or so nap. i ended up sleeping for FIVE HOURS!! woke up at about 11:30 at night and thought, "there no way in hell I'm gonna start all that stuff for my hair now!" and i have a busy weekend ahead of me, so there'll be no time this weekend. maybe next weekend? oh well. i was really looking forward to curling my hair again.

Hat Youtube

heres the youtube vid i did about the hat.



by the way, i started the looming blog. that address is loominglilly.blogspot.com

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!!