A Dreadiversary

Ok the name is a bit odd, I'll give you that. But this post is about Christine and she calls them her "dreadies." Dreadlocs is a legit name for locs, even though me and G just say "locs," so DREADIVERSARY it is!

I read Christine.

Christine describes herself and her family:


Take one homeschooling mom with dreads and a nose ring, add a hot bald dude, five kids via birth/adoption, a bunch of special needs, an RV park ... yup, that's us.

But she is SO much more than that. Even though that is pretty intriguing in and of itself. I found Christine's blog as a link from Corey's blog, of whom I'm also a faithful reader. As I was reading Christine's blog, I noticed a picture of her Haitian daughter. I was like "huh." Then later I saw a pic of her Haitian son and I said "HUH!" And I said "no freaking way, could it be?" and then "it's gotta be....what a small small world." As it turns out I met her two kids in Haiti a few years before when I was there to visit my daughter before her adoption was complete. Her two kids were staying someplace temporarily and I happened to be there when they were. I had video of them, photos....and I was SO HAPPY to see that they were in such an awesome home. If you read Christine for any length of time, which you should; she posts about such cool and awesome and interesting and deep stuff, you will find that she is a wonderful advocate of therapeutic parenting (this is her YouTube channel link) , and shares her knowledge freely and helps a lot LOT LOT of people.

If there were one short post that illustrates to me how wonderful hairtime is in terms of the closeness and bonding that can take place, especially for kids who are attachment-challenged (one huge reason for keeping kids NATURAL, so you have the chance to do hair together), it would be this one.

Ok so that is Christine.

Now, about her locs! She put them in one year ago, hence the Dreadiversary. She LOVES them, and has written them a love letter, in fact. She has what I guess I'd call organic locs with a freeform twist. They do seem to be separated. I really don't think she wants to pigeonhole them with any kind of naming, though. The thing she cherishes most about them is their wild freedom to do and be...WHATEVAH!

Christine has very straight hair, and I think she mentioned it was quite fine. She put these locs in with NO WAXING. Just washing it clean, letting it separate on its own, then ratting and palmrolling each naturally-forming chunk. She did a video on it here.

I have a secret. I want to have locs. I want the more rolled, cylindrical looking locs, but I don't know if it's possible to have them like that. I have very thick straight hair and it's kind of oily (noticeable oil after 24 hours) but it does have a cowlicky wave to it when it's just hanging there. I did recently get some layers in the ends so that it does "something" while it's just hangin'.  This is me this morning:

I really spend ZERO time on my hair. I don't want to blow dry it, curl it, flatten it, froof with it, poof with it, or anything. Here is my morning hair routine:

Shower. Shampoo. Condition. Scrub with towel. Rip a brush through it. Put sunglasses on as a headband or take an elastic to work with me to put in later.

Amen.

Of course you are probably thinking: STEPHANIE! Are you nuts, if you have zero time for your hair NOW, how are you going to maintain locs? Especially if you want those rolly looking ones?

Well, I dunno. But I DO know that someday my kid is going to be much more independent and may even want to try maintaining her own hair, and may one day even CHANGE her hairstyle (gasp!)  and someday I'm not gonna have any more locs to maintain on a regular basis unless:

A) I live with her or near her (at age 7 I think all kids want their moms to live with them forever, but...um yeah. Age 14? Probably not so much.)

or

B) I pimp myself out as a forlorn empty-nester who just wants to get her hands on someone else's hair to care for. I will walk around with a tackle box full of beads and snaps at the ready just in case.

So, I forsee idle hands in my future. And I'm STILL not going to want to style my fairly boring thick straight hair in 5 or 10 years, any more than I want to style it now. But rolling and ratting and twisting my hair into some new re-invention of itself? Now THAT sounds much more interesting.

Plus (and here is the kicker) it's a totally great way for me to have a reason to put beads and such decorations in my hair. Loc charms with the dingleberries hanging from them? Oh yeah. That will be me.

So, someday! I recently watched a video at KnottyBoy.com of a stylist putting locs into a guys hair...he had red hair with some definite wave and frizz to it. She used tons of wax though (I am still trying to figure out what HAPPENS to all the wax that people with locs put in their hair!). They are located in Vancouver, BC. As in Canada.

So like, road trip, maybe?

Have you ever entertained the idea of locs? If so, do you think you will do it, forreals? If you did it, how? Loctician? Yourself? Do you love em?

Christine sure seems to!

 

Shout Out for Guests AND Feedback

Hello everyone, this is a shout out! 

This is something I am very excited about. We already have a few people who have agreed to guest post for us on various topics. We also have all you awesome readers sending us hairstyle pix, which is great. We have received some fab ones!

I would like to put a call out to any reader who would be interested in guest posting for us on the topic of keeping hair natural as a girl grows into a teen. Ideally, a mom with such a teen would be wonderful! We want to know HOW DID YOU DO IT? LOL

Seriously, if you have a teen who still has natural hair, embraces it, and you have some great teen style advice to share, and/or style pix, please email us at keepmecurly@gmail.com and let's talk! We would love to have you do a guest post for us. If you successfully helped steer your child away from wanting a relaxer, we want to know your secret to that, too.

Secondly, now that we have a few giveaways under our belt, we would like to hear from those of you who won items or who have ordered products from the featured vendors...we want to know what you think! Please email us with comments, stories, photos, anything!

For example, we were forwarded some feedback from our reader Sheila who had ordered Sidewinders.....now LOOK at this adorableness!

 Here is what Sheila had to say about her experience:

This is our "Halfro" style.  The half-cornrows stagger diagonally with over-lapping parts.  The 'fro in the back half gives the added fullness that really seems to frame her cute smile.

 

The orange and black was for back to school.  The multi-colors are perfect with her "giggle" shirt.  We LOVE that we can change these every day to match clothes or momentary whims.  We have even used the 2" size to "racer-back" the straps of a swimsuit that was a little too big.

 

Thanks for your quick service and great color selection!

 

That racer-back idea for shirts and swimsuits? LOVE IT! We use cute barrettes to do that now but I can't wait to try the Sidewinders for this purpose!

So let's hear from you!