Loc Trim!

Finally! I finished tightening B's locs! That always feels like such a big job, but what a relief when it is done! I worked on her locs every morning this week since she had soccer camp in the afternoon. I was going to time how many total hours it took me, but I forgot! Next time! While working on her hair, I thought about it, and realized it had probably been 10 to 12 weeks since I last tightened! WHOA! I think it is totally worth one weeks worth of work to tighten them when I won't have to do it again for 3 months!

For quite awhile now there has been one thing about B's locs that was bugging me. They were really starting to get uneven in length. Every now and then I would have a loc that was a good inch or more longer than the ones around it! It really shows you how unevenly hair can grow. I had wanted to trim some of the long ends off but three things were stopping me. 1) Is trimming locs a no-no? 2) I love the curly Q ends, and if I trim them off they will be gone forever! 3) If I trim the ends will her braids unravel? This wouldn't be a problem for most people, but B's hair is so resistant to locing that the parts of her hair that you can still see the original braids, look as though they could EASILY be undone.

Well, a few months ago I came across a blog of an adult woman with locs. She had a post about going to her beautician to get her hair cut and styled. Her locs were long and gorgeous! But they were getting heavy for her and she wanted them cut into a style. If I remember correctly she had them cut into a layered look. The after pictures of her hair were GREAT! So, that answered my first question, it must be OK to cut locs.

For the second question, I realized that now that B's locs are two years old, many of her curly Q ends were looking pretty scraggly. It really wasn't going to be that hard for me to cut off some of those yucky looking ends!

For the third question I really don't have an answer. But, for most of the locs that I trimmed, I only cut off part of the curl and didn't even get all the way up to the braided part, so it was't really a problem.

So, yes, I took the plunge and I did it! And it felt good! I wasn't a perfectionist about it. I wasn't going for a perfect blunt cut look. I know that would be to hard to achieve. So I just trimmed off the ones that were poking really far out the bottom, and I took off as little as possible. It takes a LONG time to really see growth in locs, so I wasn't about to go scissor crazy!

B also has an area above her right ear that is way shorter than most of the rest of her hair. This bugs me a lot, but I am hoping that if we keep doing little trims every once in a while, eventually it will catch up with the rest of her hair. By parting her hair to the side, I am able to kind of camouflage it, but certain styles that we do make it pretty obvious. That being said, I bet no one notices beside me!

These are pictures from a previous tightening. I don't know if it was the last one, or two times ago, but you can see some of those long ones hanging out.

These pictures are from today when we finished tightening! I think her hair looks GREAT! So fresh!

In this picture of the back you can see that I didn't get them perfectly straight. I wasn't willing to cut that much off! But I think it looks a lot better than before!

You can also see that the back is longer than the sides. At least this side (this is the short side) I am hoping to slowly even it up over time.

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Forgive me for being a bit scattered today, but I promised I would show pics of V's twists after they settled in a bit. Turns out that they shrunk up a bit! This is why locs end up looking so much shorter than the actually length of hair. Super curly hair just has a way of shrinking and shrinking and shrinking! Anyway, I put some flower barrettes in today so this is how it looks after a week and two days:

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Lastly, I will leave you with a few pics from our family trip last weekend!
Sorry this one is a bit blurry, but it was the only one I took of my whole family. They are at the dinosaur exhibit at the Children's Museum in Indianapolis.

This is B on the runway at the Barbie exhibit!

Here is little E on the Barbie phone.

Here is a BEAUTIFUL and incredibly rare moment with V and Young Man C. (who don't normally get along very well!)

And last...a lovely natural hair ornament, this butterfly decided to take a ride on V's head for awhile!

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

Katie