Tag: relaxer

Bantu Knot Out…Hmmm

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As I’ve been growing my hair out for the past two months, yes, I like the big curly fro thing I have going on most of the time, but I get hella bored. Obvi I’m going to get bored, the whole reason for me to start this quest was to try something new! Anyway, I got the whole how-to on a Bantu Knot-Out from Curly Nicky and I decided to give it a try. Here’s what I did:

1. CO wash hair with Giovanni Smooth as Silk–love this conditioner: no cones and great slippage, dry hair with t-shirt.

2. Comb KC Knot Today through damp hair and separate into four sections, pin up sections.

3. Get twirling/twisting! I took small/medium sections of my hair and twirled them around my finger until it sort of went into the bun formation on it’s own, sealed ends with shea butter (100% pure) and tucked under. I also put a bit of KC Curling Custard on each section. This took about an hour.

4. Dried hair with a diffuser for about ten minutes. Put on my satin scarf, slept carefully. Sigh–not the best sleep!

5. In the morning, I started to take the knots out, but sigh, of course, with my crazy thick hair most of them weren’t dry. Back to diffusing for like, another 20 minutes. I finished taking them down (finally!!), smoothed out some ends with more shea, and added some BioSilk for shine. It ended up looking like this:

Knot OutKnots 2

How do I feel about it? Hmmm…that’s pretty much it. Like, I think they came out how they are supposed to, and I don’t think it was ugly…it just…wasn’t me. The best part was when I went to my mom’s and she looked at me funny and I’m like WTF why are you looking at me like that?? You don’t like my hair? And she was like, “Well, I mean, it looks alright…but…you look like you’re trying to be African or something?” Yea, thanks, Mom. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be doing this one again…up next, a Twist Out!

xoxo

Welcome to My Quest!

Curly Hair

Welcome to the quest….haha, that sounds so corny. However, it pretty much is a quest. Webster defines a quest as, “an act or instance of seeking.” Well, that’s what I’m doing–seeking my natural hair texture, because I simply have NO IDEA what it is! A bit of back story:

Once upon a time, there was a little girl with a head full of hair, all down her wee back. The little girl’s mother did everything to try to tame her wild locks, but with no avail. So, when the little girl was five, her mother decided to relax all of her crazy hair. From that day on, the little girl got relaxers consistently, both lye, no-lye, regular and mild. In a traumatic incident, the little girl had half of her hair cut off (shampoo reaction, who knew!?), but it always grew back, which gave the little girl the notion that her hair was invincible. Eventually, the little wildchild grew into a cute wild teenager (yes, I’m calling myself cute, get over it), who became obsessed with changing her hair when she was bored. The teen queen curled her hair with heat constantly, dyed her locks with Manic Panic, Loreal Feria, KOOL-AID, and even BLEACHED it with highlights, all with her relaxed head of hair. Surprisingly, her hair didn’t fall out (well, after the bleaching, some of thoooose locks may have snapped off), so she became further convinced that she had iron hair, strong like bull. However, there was one thing the girl had never done–she had never cut her hair (on purpose). So, she skipped to the hair salon and cut her locks, which were in the middle of her back, up to her ears. Drastic, right? She never was one for subtlety.

Anyway, the wild teen became a slightly less wild adult, and she kept her hair short from that point in high school. For some reason, she just thought it suited her. She continued to dye and relax her hair (no bleaching though) and it all seemed fine. She flat ironed, waved and curled her hair to her little heart’s content, yet her hair still continued to grow and stay crazy thick, even with relaxers every eight weeks. However, years later, there was still one thing this avid hair experimenter had never done–she had never grown out her relaxer. She also could not remember the tiny child with the wild hair, or what that wild hair looked like. She thought that now, in the heat of the DC summer, when she began flat ironing her hair twice a day, would be the perfect time to experiment with her natural locks. So, our WildChild put her flatiron and curling iron under her sink, and set out  to do some internet research on natural/curly hair. Using dynamic resources like Naturally Curly and Curly Nikki she thought, “I can do this, I can totally go natural.” Previously, she didn’t even know there were special products for chicks with natural or curly hair. Who knew?

And so, our little WildChild begins her quest to find her very own curl. It won’t be easy, at times, it may not be pretty, but it will be one thing (at least to her): annoying! Haha, just kidding. Stay tuned….