Coconut Oil For the Win!

Today I did an intense DT with coconut oil and my hair is definitely much happier. Much less frizz and my dryness is almost gone. The best thing is that the jar I've had since October is still more than 3/4 full!

Tomorrow I'm leaving for the East Coast for a week. Unfortunately we're driving and I'll have much more limited internet access than the trip to the West Coast. Though here's to better curls!

Ditching the Plop: An Experiment

So today I decided to experiment a bit with my post-shower routine. I read a post recently on nc.com started by my friend Del in which she decided to stop plopping because it was pulling out her waves. I've felt the same in recent months, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Here's the background on my plopping habits: I've always done it. Since Day 1 of CG. I would add styling products in the shower and then plop into a t-shirt. Later I discovered flour sack towels. After 4 months CG, a discussion popped up on double plopping. Guess what I did? I even added the Curl Ease towel to get my plopping fix.

My current routine requires three flour sack towels (or 2 towels and the Curl Ease, but I seem to have misplaced that one). One for blotting before applying KCCC in the shower, one for plopping into after applying KCCC, and one for plopping into after applying gel. I like plopping mostly because it gets my hair out of my face and off my neck, making it easier to towel off and get dressed before applying gel, diffusing, etc.

As much as I love plopping, I am unable to plop overnight. I end up with weird curls and lots of frizz, nevermind the fact that it's a pain to do and leaves me with a headache the next morning. Even with regular plops, I can't do it for very long. My first plop is only for a minute or two - long enough to towel off and get dressed. The second plop is generally only five minutes. Leaving it in longer leads to frizz.

I also used this time to experiment with clipping and diffusing the roots prior to diffusing the rest of my hair.

The Experiment:

1. Followed the regular shower routine. Applied KCKT and pink boots to very wet hair.

2. Taking one inside-out t-shirt, I blotted my hair upside-down and on both sides. (I don't have the Curls Like Us Cloths, nor the $ to spend on them)

3. Applied KCCC like normal.

4. Blotted some more with t-shirt.

5. Exited shower. Applied gel like normal.

6. Blotted some more with another t-shirt.

7. Carefully got dressed. This was really complicated.

8. Clipped roots and diffused them for 5 or 10 min

9. Took clips out and diffused upside-down like normal.

Results:

Frizzy, undefined, and gross

There were definitely more cons than pros, but I'll list both.

Pros:

I do have a little more volume up top and on the side opposite my part. That's about it.

Cons:

First, the whole process was a lot more uncomfortable than I'm used to. My bathroom was super humid for almost the whole time I was in there (including diffusing), my hair was sticking to me, and it was hard to get dressed and move around with it everywhere.

Second, holy frizz batman!

Third, my hair is no where near as curly as it is when I plop.

For full disclosure, I've shampooed twice in the last week and a half (though each was preceded and followed with DTs) and my hair was a little dry. However, my hair looked much better, and had much less frizz, on Tuesday when I shampooed. I may try this again when my hair is regularly moisturized. But not for a long time!

Update

1. I'm back from vacation. My hair really suffered, but I had a good time and that's all that matters in the end. It doesn't look horrible in any of the pictures, so that's good too!

2. I will be DTing and clarifying today, because something about it is seriously messed up and I don't have the patience to try and fix it without clarifying. It's been four months since my last shampoo. I know it wasn't that bad last time. I'll have to look back to see what I did.

3. Funny story: I got a bad sunburn (only looks bad; didn't really hurt) last Sunday, mostly on my arms. In the middle of the week, I noticed my scalp along the part was pink. Then came the peeling. Now, in addition to already being weird, my hair looks like a blizzard.

4. New blog look. Not sure I'm liking it. It might be a little bright. Blogger changed their designs a while back and some of them are really nice. It was hard to find something that works with the curly hair theme, but I was in a summery mood. Opinions are welcome.

Weird Hair

Just a little hair update from vacation. It's funny; I was so concerned about it before leaving, and now I could care less how it looks. I had the most frizz I've had in a LONG time and didn't really care at all.

I don't know what it is, but my hair has been weird the couple times I've washed it here. Usually when I do my final rinse upside-down, there's a little foaming action going on in the drain from my rinse-out condition. Not a lot, but some. Now it's like foam on steroids; like I'm rinsing out shampoo. And I can feel how coated it is just by scrunching - when it supposedly has nothing in it.

I thought maybe it was hard water, but looking at a map didn't help. All the ones I saw on google told me that it was very hard, and that my water at home is very hard too. Which I don't think is true, both from experience and from multiple maps I saw a few years ago. So I don't know.

When it's dry, it's dry. I've had a lot of frizz. I've only been using KCCC and Aussie as stylers. I was going to use pink boots but my hair felt so soft in the shower that I didn't want to make it worse. I tried using CK underneath KCCC last night and it worked out ok. No big difference.

Seriously, it's the grossest feeling when wet. At this point, I don't care. I'll deal with it at home.

On another note, today I got chlorine in my hair for the first time since going CG. I hadn't been planning on getting it wet at all. No conditioner in it or anything. My siblings quickly saw to that. I washed afterwards, but didn't bother going through the whole styling and diffusing routine. So not sure how it'll end up. I really don't want to shampoo. Might have to anyway with this weird foaming thing though.

Anyway, there's a quick update. Here's a vacation shot from Los Angeles:

It's Finally Happened...

One year and eight months later, I have finally finished my first jar of KCCC. I thought this day would never come.


And honestly, I think I used about half of it back when I was completely clueless as to how it worked best for me.

I held off on buying this for a few months after going CG due to price. At the time, this was $26 plus more than $8 in shipping in taxes from Curlmart. I paid a total of $34.75 to get this jar. That works out to about $1.73 a month, if I'm doing my math right. What a bargain! Especially considering this is HG stuff for me.

I just opened my new jar. I've had it for a little over a year. I panicked last spring when prices were going up and I thought I'd be out of my first jar pretty quickly (I'd already used up half of it). I bought this one for a total of $20 from Ricky's in NYC. How long will this one last?

Problem Solved!

So I just found out that we are actually going to be able to check a bag when we fly out on Saturday (technically my dad's going for work, so they'll pay to check it).

The good news is that my bag was chosen as the one to be checked (it will also be the biggest!).

The bad news is that I just went and got a bunch of 3oz bottles last night. I guess that's not totally bad news, though.

I was actually getting worried about it, because I only bought five. That was based on hair products only - totally forgot about skincare! Moot point now, I guess.

Now that that problem is solved, I'm working on my other one: dry hair. I did a DT today with Jessicurl's Weekly Deep Treatment topped off with coconut oil. I think I'll rinse it out tomorrow. I wonder if it's the environment? Hopefully it'll do better on the West Coast.

Traveling: Curly Style

I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but I will be flying to the West Coast on Saturday. I'm really excited (it's been almost two years since I've been), but there are two things that worry me:

1. Carry-on bags and what that means for hair products

2. How my hair is going to react to the 30-degree temperature and 15-degree dew point drops, along with a major increase in humidity

Don't get me wrong, I've been on planes before. We've just always checked our bags, so I never had to worry about the liquids being in 3oz bottles before. Now I'm being forced to carry on my luggage (checking a bag for $25 each way doesn't work well with my whole being unemployed thing) and I have no idea what I'm going to do. I'll be there for ten days, so I'm going to need a substantial amount of conditioner and styling products. It seems stupid to put a bottle of conditioner in as many little bottles as I can. I mean really, what's the point? Why can't I just keep it in the original container?

Add to that the whole different climate thing. I'm not sure what to fill those little bottles up with. The last time I went was in late September. It was also after I had to shampoo for some reason and I was dealing with my first big protein overdose. And the only pictures I have of that time to try and remember are the day of a wedding; I washed an hour or two before we had to leave, so my hair didn't really dry until way later and ended up flat. So no help there:

I think I'll end up with V05 Raspberry & GVP Conditioning Balm for conditioners. Maybe some KCKT. KCCC and my Aussie gel for sure. Maybe Pink Boots.

My hair's been kind of dry lately, and as usual it could be a number of things (protein, oils, lack of DTs, etc). Playing it safe will probably be the best for me right now.

This is more of a venting type post, but any advice is welcomed!