6 Months

A quick update. Haven't done one for ages. I'm about 6 months into the locing process. Most of my hair has locked up nicely there are a few that havent locked on the ends though.Mainly just using water on my hair. It itsches sometimes, but nowhere near as much as it did when I had relaxed hair! Here are a couple of up to date pics:

1 Month (just about)

I got a bit eager, so I just finished my first retightening. I did it over 3 days i started at the front then decided to go from the back and move forward. My hair was so frizzy I couldn't wait to get my latch hook in there. At least I have the hang of it now! Here are pics of my hair now (2 days after finishing the retightening, and a few rinses lol)...

Latchin'

I got a bit annoyed with a couple of my plaits coming undone so I thought I would have a go at latching the damn things. Only problem is I haven't brought a latch-hook yet, so I thought I would try a paperclip.

I unbent it and then made it into a loop shape. And you know what it worked just fine! I'm not sure that I will even buy a latch hook now considering i have like 200 paperclips!













Here is a pic of the lacthing i did, just the bottom row and it turned out nicely!











I then decided to take it on step further and see if I could latch my relaxed ends. I put I tiny knot at the end of my hair and latched until i got to the plait














Latched relaxed end of plait.















End of plait with a knot in it.







Well there's def no going back now!

Braided Up

I got my little sister to do my plaits. It took her two days, she plaits slower than I do and takes more break than I do too. I'll let her off though she is only 15 and she did a decent enough job.

After she did it, quite a lot of the plaits were pretty straight, I wanted them to look less uniform and a little bit wild so I rinsed my hair with lemon juice and water and towel dried then air dried. I made up a very weak mixture of Castor oil and water and spritzed it on my hair. I'm not sure if I actually put enough oil in it to be honest. But my hair looks okay so I won't mess with it too much.

I don't know if anyone else has a similar problem but... whatever I put on my head at night, a Du-rag, bandanna, scarf etc. never stays there and is off by the morning unless I tie it on so tight that it gives me a headache. Not good.

Getting Ready

As I sit here taking out my extensions (single plaits/braids). I have been reading discussion boards and looking at other peoples blogs and photo albums. There are a lot of lovely locs out there and I can't wait to grow mine. I'm glad I have finally made this decision, tomorrow I will get my sister to do my braids for me. I would like them pretty slim as I want fairly slim locs.

I plan on maintaining my regrowth using the mystical latch hook at the moment and see how that goes. I know twisting wouldn't work for me, I think it would frustrate me, at least when it's latched it done and unlikely to slip out. I don't want to free form as I want a more "manicured" look.

I really wanted sisterlocks, but upon receiving a quote of £400 for them to be put in I decided to find another method. There was no way I could afford that on my tight budget! But if I did have the money I would have definitely gone for sisterlocks.

I have thought about problems that I may encounter in the future. So far I think they are:

1. In my quest for slim locs I may start my braids too think in the first place which could lead to breakage in the future, so I would have to combine locks.
2. By wanting thin locs I will have a lot of starter locs on my head, which will mean a lot of latch hooking, in the future if it is too much I may combine locs for convenience.

That said I have seen people with nice slim locs (that aren't sisterlocks, or maintained by the SL tool) and they look nice and healthy, so fingers crossed mine will turn out just fine.

Anyway back to undoing my hair!

...Update:

After taking out my hair and washing it, this is what it looked like: