Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Our Daily Dread.

Ariel came in for dreadlocks today! She popped in for a consult last week, and when she took her hair outta her cap I just about fainted. That is a lot of hair. Thankfully, she assured me she wasn't looking for a bazillion tiny locks, so I was reasonably sure I wouldn't have to clear my week.

So, as I had my morning caffeinebomb, and Ariel had what looked like a homemade raspberry smoothie (probably not designed to make me feel like a diabeetus-bound sugar junkie) we rehashed the day's plan. Turns out that while she's sticking to the plan of not getting really small dreads (phew!) she now wanted really BIG ones. Hey, no problem, I say!

Except there's a problem.

Ariel's a small girl. I couldn't make her sections very big or she'd end up with twenty locks, maybe. Extra large sections can look great to start out, but once they grow out you've got a ton of loose hair between very few formed dreads - definitely not the "lions mane" she was looking to rock! So, like the grownups we are (well, like she is) we made a compromise. I made the sections a touch larger than i normally would, and she gave the okay to give up her length.

Normally with the techniques I use, my clients end up losing anywhere from an inch to a few inches, depending on the state of their ends - far less than in the traditional backcomb-and-wax method. Most people are happy to sport a tapered dread to keep their length, and some folks straight up prefer the softer finish. With Ariel's hair, I backcombed far tighter than was strictly necessary to lock (pushing all her length to the scalp) where I could weave a tight, fat dread with a blunted end for consistency. We're both totally stoked on how it turned out!

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

"You can do that?"






Sometimes, despite the best of intentions, your hair can get a little out of hand. I'm not talking "loose hair, a little bit of joining" like my last post, I'm talking "Oh wait... why do I only have one dreadlock now?". There is a crazy amount of misinformation on the subject of dreads, and you need to be discerning about who you listen to. You would not believe the insane theories I've heard surrounding starting dreads and maintaining them. (I'm not going to get into it right now as that would deprive me of an excellent rant subject for a later post, but as a general rule you can safely avoid vehicle fluids and food, all right?)


Today I want to explain what goes into Dreadlock Repair and Reconstruction services. It's one of the more "wow! awesome!" services offered at the shop - it makes a huge difference in how people look at their hair. R&R is a step up in intensity from Root Maintenance, and it covers a whole lot o' dissatisfactions we see regularly. In repairs, I'm looking for folks with semi- mature/mature dreads who have neglected to maintain them, or worse - were never told how to by their stylists. Besides reattaching broken locks and strengthening weak spots, I can fix these common dread problems:
Matting between locks


Major joining



Undreaded sections


Irregularities in shape



Before



After!



In cases of Reconstruction, I'm looking at newer, immature locks. Most often they've been started at home, and just aren't as radtastic as my client would like. I start by resectioning, and reweaving from top to bottom to create tight, easier-to-maintain locks. It's tough to tell from the picture, but there are sections started in here - only problem is that they're waaaay too small. Sounds like a great idea at the time, until you have to individually palmroll 100 dreads. I'm not gonna say you won't... but I will say that most won't.

Before Reconstruction

After Reconstruction
And even after joining up most of her dreads, she still had about 50! After a few days the gaps become less visible, and the tightly woven locks start to lay flat. You have an almost-new head of dreadlocks! If any of these pictures look familiar, come on by to chat about it. I'll see what I can do!

please excuse all the wacky formatting, but i've been fighting with blogger all freakin' day. sorry about that migraine, kiddo.