New Revalations and a change in direction...nevertheless the same outcome

Some of you may know that I have been considering a range of things for my locs stemming from dissapointment with the way in which my locs have been progressing in terms of size, partings etc as well as critisisms from the closest woman in my life...my mum. After my recent trials and tribulations with the haphazard combining of weaker and wrongly installed mega micro locs, I decided to go ahead and install loc extensions to my locs. Now I know that this changes the direction of things and some may not agree with what I have done but as far as I am concerned...I love them and that is all that matters. 

So what do I have now? well i have a mixture of braidlocs (some that were restarted and not locked by my consultant), twist locs (some that were too small to braid were twisted), remenants of sisterlocs (i say remenants because my partings over time were defaced) and loc extensions consisting of 2-3 inches at the ends. Now I know it may not look like much of a difference but it is funny how overnight I felt my confidence grow! I have not wore my hair short like previously since I was 14 years old and the majority of my adult life has been with me in single plaits. Even my husband said to me that although he loved my locs as they were, that he hasn't seen me smile as much as I do now, which is lovely. I am not giving them a name or a brand and I am sure there will be many different enterpretations of this so for now they are MY locs, MrsMac's locs. If you buy a TV in the shop and take it home and add a DVD player is it no longer a TV?

Am I worried about the effect on my locs? No. And I'll tell you why. Over the last few months for one reason or another I have been unhappy with my locs, not because of sisterlocks, I still love them and that is what my foundation is. The difference is that with all the above I have tried so hard to recitfy the problems myself and almost came to the understanding that I would need to say goodbye to my locs and take them down, so in a way I have done my greiving should things go wrong with the extensions. I do not harbour bad feeling over the events that led me to this as I have learned so much in the process and should the extensions go wrong then I know what I want and will find a consultant that can install the sisterlocks or indeed microlocs that I want. Of course heart of hearts I am hoping that this will not go wrong and in a year or so's time I will cut off the 2-3 inches and have a good head of sisterlocks/microlocks/whateverlocs. Having said that, if I was or need to do it all again, the root beds would need to be larger because I just dont think they are strong enough to hold tiny locs but would flourish with larger ones.

After wash & dye

Is there any difference? Yes there is, I have escaped from bondage and today I dyed my hair jet balck (boring I know! but my favourite!) as well as washed without braiding and banding. My hair rejoiced halleulia as the water flowed through my scalp! I have also noticed that I dont seem to have that immediate itch as I did when I had to braid and band which is heaven sent! I will be washing my hair on a weekly basis especially now the time is warming up. I will hopefully still be going to my new consultant if she will have me and will more than likely take a class either official or unofficial to retighten my hair myself and I will be spritzing with water, rosemary oil and rose oil on an as needed basis.

After flat twisting, all apart from top left

So with all that said, no frills, nothing fancy, just me and my way of doing things. I hope I continue to receive the same support as I had done before and I continue to look forward on my journey x

An update and ramblings...

There has been so much going on since my last post! I will try to keep it brief!

4 Weeks ago I took some pictures of my back row of locks that my consultant said I had build up in. The pictures were absolutely awful and I decided that I was not going to walk around with what looked like immense build up. I sectioned off my hair and put it through an ACV wash and then a clarifying wash. I then took pictures to see the progress and if anything the specs of what I thought was build up was worse. I took the desision to undo the entire back row. Upon taking them down there was what appeared to be white or grey little balls in my hair, didnt think it looked like build upthough. I redone the back row using my nappy lock tool and at my appointment my consultant said I done a good job. Great.

During my retight my consultant said that there were more locks with build up in them and that she would not retighten them and that I should take them down and she would put them back in at my next appointment, or I could do them myself as I done such a good job! NOT HAPPY! Becasue she spent so long retightening and looking for build up she did not finish retightenening my hair and put brightly coloured rubber bands over the ones she wanted taken down. Further into the session I mentioned to her that I was not happy with the tiny size of some of them at the front and that they are always tangling and look unstable, she agreed that she had installed some of them too small in the beginning. I asked if any combining was done for it to be done vertically so that it would preserve my partings. I left the appointment as was told to come back a week later for her to finish retightenining and reinstalling the taken down locks.

When I cam home I was broken. my hair had rubber bands hanging off the ends 22 to be precise, the retightening of the rest was half done and I realised that the combining that was done was generally side by side and not in rows as I had asked. The result was that from around 3 rows in either side of my ears I could not part my hair straight. I spent most of that evening in tears with the tail tooth comb unpicking the 22 locks. It took me the whole weekend.

Deciding that I could no longer take no more, I enlisted the valied opinion of another consultant who agreed that there were a lot of issues with regards to my rows in the front half of my head and we discussed taking them down and redoing a good third of the front. We also discussed the build up issues and after thinking about it, what I believed was build up was more than likely lint that could have been picked out if I had known.I left sombre, but hopeful that things will get better. Hopefully this will be my new consultant from here on out. Knowing that I was on leave for work nad had a little time on my hands, when I arrived home I put myself together and decided to go through and see for myself how bad the partings really were and the spirit of DIY took me! I went through row by row re-establishing the vertical partings by uncombing side by side locks and recombining them with the one in front or behind. Where I could not undo the combined section of two locks I took it down and relocked them the way I wanted them seperately. This took me two whole days. Upon being so personal with my hair I realised that whilst I have 3 boxes in my front section, that I also had two traingle sections, well at least they were matching so I cut my looses and said that triangles stay!  will see if I can do a drawing to show what I mean by that.

Having sorted that problem and feeling confident that my parts are somewhat decent, I finished retightening the rest of my hair myself and cancelled the appointment with my original consultant. I then comissioned another peice of work to be carried out on my locks that I will not go into in this post. After being cancelled on once, the hairdresser came to do the work asked. She hadnt finished the task and said she would be back the next day to complete the work. Having worked with this lady before I agreed to pay the fee requested and agreed to see her the next day. The next day she cancelled. So once again I am back to having now a quarter or my head looking totally different from the rest and am having to wear my hair under a scarf.

Needless to say this has been a very trying 3 weeks, I am slightly discouraged with all that has happened, but am determined to have my locks the way I want them!

Stay blessed x