Dread Do-Over

Saturday last I met with Joel at the Lock Shop. He was totally unhappy with the state of his dreads, and I get where he's coming from; when he first took his hat off, I had to strain just to see any. His hair had barely started to knot together up nearer the roots, and the lengths were still totally loose. Joel's hair as-is would eventually dread with enough hard work, but a Reconstruction service would fast forward this undone phase and cut out months of daily backcombing and waxing.



Like all my fave reconstructions, Joel's was made so much easier by having essentially sound sectioning. There were really only a few points where it was necessary to reshape the section at the root, usually because of either awkward angles or poor sizing. For the most part I was able to simply clean up what was already there section-wise, then weave from there to the tip of the dread - creating solid knots from top to bottom. I'm wicked grateful he was an hour and half early for his appointment, because I just barely got Joel out the door at closing time, about 5 hours after we started. This was a lot more work than I was expecting at 3pm on a Saturday!



I'm very grateful to Joel for the opportunity to restart these locks. I think we were both pretty stoked at the outcome! If you've got questions about your locks, or you wanna start a new set altogether, shoot me an email! scissorninja@gmail.com. Have a great weekend!

Doug's Do-Over

Doug first contacted me via email a couple of weeks ago after reading about Zach's Reconstruction. Like Zach, he had started his dreads some time ago, but couldn't quite keep up with the maintenance required to get them looking as awesome as he'd like.

Here are Doug's dreads before we got going. They're about a year old, and show the beginnings of felting for about 3 inches in the middle of each section. Luckily, his 70+ sections were still pretty easy to pull apart, so weaving up the 5 or 6 inches of new growth to the root wasn't too tough. The real difficulty was in getting Doug's very thick, very slick hair to stay in the knots I was trying to create. It took us about 5 hours, but we got the tightly woven locks we were shooting for, and from here on out Doug's maintenance routine will be a fraction of what it was time-wise.

I had a lovely day working with Doug, he's got such a laid back and positive outlook on life. He's currently crossing Canada performing Improvised A Capella songs that have "never been heard before, nor will they ever be heard again. They're just for you." Click here to visit his website and hear some truly unique music!

If you've got questions about your dreads or you're interested in starting some new ones, drop me a line anytime at scissorninja@gmail.com.

Nope, Not A Maintenance!

When folks call to get Dread Maintenance done, there are a few questions I ask because I need to determine if maintenance is truly what the client needs. A few of those include:

Are the dreads separate at the root, or joined?
Are the dreads felting together, or is there loose hair in unlocked sections?
Are we only dealing with the new growth at the roots, or do the dreads need weaving from root to end?

In the case of Zach, I was fairly certain that I'd be doing a Reconstruction as opposed to a regular Maintenance service. I'm generally asked to perform Reconstructions on newer, less mature locks that need work from root to tip. (Repair tends to be on more mature dreads that need lumps and whorls pulled in, or major corrections like reattachment done.) Zach had been putting elastics on his new dreads which left him with tiny hard knots at the ends, and large gaps of unlocked hair in the middle. (I totally get it - it seems like such an awesome idea to get your ends tightened up! But to continue with backcomb-and-wax method dreads you gotta be able to keep backcombing. It's a long process.) The hair that was dreading was coming together in flat 's' shapes, with large bubbles due to loose hair joining with neighboring locks. All in all, he wasn't wicked stoked.



The hardest thing to overcome in a Reconstruction is bad sectioning. Luckily, the stylist Zach saw took the time to make great sections that laid in a very nice bricklay pattern - no odd, random shapes biting into each other, no long lines running down his head. With that great base, it was so much easier to do my job! I separated the matting at the roots, and pulled apart the knots at the ends to re-backcomb the sections evenly. From there it's just weaving all that hair back together into a nice cylindrical shape. If he does his homework, Zach's dreads should be fully felted up in less time than it took for him to decide his original set needed help.



Usually a Reconstruction starts at about 4 hours, but Zach had such a good base of sectioning we managed to rock this out in 3. If you're unhappy with any aspect of your locks, or you're overwhelmed and aren't sure where to start, drop your question in the comments or shoot me an email at scissorninja@gmail.com.

"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.