Long Time, No Blog

Haha I had to. It was just too cheesy to pass up!

Helloooo curly world! I did it again. I disappeared. My appologies. It's that final push to the end of the second semester, and the professors are really piling it on. It's as much as I can do to get enough sleep at night. There simply hasn't been any time for blogging.

But enough excuses. What have I been up to hair wise?

Ugh I've been having some issues. I think I had a pretty good case of build up. I'm not sure what it was from. But when I would scratch at my scalp, I'd get a very healthy portion of white gunk (yuck!) and I noticed a smell coming from my scalp as well. It's not my cowashing technique I don't think since I've been CG for a good while now without this issue, so I figured that I must have just reached my limit and something was just loving my hair and scalp so much it decided to stick around.

So I decided to try and treat it with a lowpoo first. The low poos (I did a couple over the course of a few days) helped; it cut down on the white gunk and smell, but something still didn't feel right.

So I did something bad. I reached for the sulfate poo. A lot of curlies who are CG tend to look at a sulfate poo as a death sentence. However, I don't think that one sulfate wash has the power to undo several months of proper treatment. I feel it's the repeated and frequent use of sulfates that does us in.

I kept my original bottle of sulfate poo that I used to use everyday (had to because my scalp would then overproduce oil and I thought I had greasy hair) when I went CG just in case I needed it. It's Herbal Essences Totally Twisted Shampoo. It's got not only sulfates but also cocamidopropyl betaine (and it claims to be moisturizing for curls *rolls eyes*) so it's definitely a cleanser. It's also silicone free.

So I did it. Oh my goodness did my hair feel STRIPPED! It was really shocking to think that that feeling used to be normal. It felt like it was literally going to scream for help it was so dry and...*shudder* squeaky. I knew that this would kick any build up in the bud though, and if it didn't fix my issues I'd have to look elsewhere for answers. So after I sulfate poo'ed, I slathered on just about every conditioner I could get my hands on. My hair felt better after the conditioner got put on.

I styled using KCCC on top of KCKT. Boy was I frizzy and undefined. I know it's from the sulfate poo, because I've been using this combo with great success lately. Yuck. Bad hair day. Made me wish my hair was long enough for a scrunchie.

Good news though. Whatever was built up seems to have been sent down the drain with the curl-killing suds of the sulfate poo. I'll have to keep this in mind though. I went about 5 months and then needed a sulfate poo. I did about 4-5 low poos in that time. So I'm not good with permanent cowashing. I suppose that makes me modified CG, even though I cowash the vast majority of the time. Eh, it's just a label anyway!

The important thing is that now that I've gotten moisture back into my hair and I'm build up free, things are looking good on the hair front. I've had some really awesome hair days with BB's Flax Gelee, KCCC, and Curl Junkie Curl Pudding (more on this next entry). Still using and loving the curl towels. I've been diffusing on Tuesdays and Thursdays now because I have later classes on those days (9:30am's woo!) and I can get up and shower and officially style my hair. Love the volume I get from diffusing. I'll have to take pictures the next time I do. I've also had one miserable failure with a product. I'll blog on that next entry though :)

Towel Time!

I've told you all about my fabulous curl towel bargain hunting, and now the objects of my penny-pinching are here! I received my CurlEase towel a few days ago so I've been able to try it twice now, and I just got my two Curls Like Us towels in the mail today so I've only used them once, but I'm still feeling pretty confident about my experimentation.

Being the science major I am, I tried to keep everything constant. I used the same products and the same amounts of them. The routine was cowash with Vo5 Strawberries and Cream, condition with Aubrey Organics Glycogen Protein Balancing Conditioner (I feel like I need a good shot of protein, so two days of this is fine and hasn't dried me out whatsoever), rake through a nickle size blob of Kinky Curling Knot Today leave in, scrunch in two finger scoops of Kinky Curly Curling Custard into sections ala the mysterflavored method (video linked in right hand side; called "How to Scrunch"), scrunch with the curl towel, and finally scrunch in about a dime size blob of LA Looks Sport gel (again, using the mysteryflavored method of scrunching). Just a note: my normal dry time with KCCC and a gel on top of it is about 4 hours from product application to totally dry (I would generally scrunch out the crunch at 3 hours)

I will first talk about the CurlEase experience.

The towel is big. And it's pink! It makes me feel very girly! I had heard from some other curlies over on CurlTalk that they would not recommend this towel for scrunching and would rather use it for plopping, which of course I'm not doing because my hair is so short now!

Well, it just goes to show that you can't follow everything everyone else says. I've had wonderful results using this towel to scrunch. I use it doubled or tripled over to increase the thickness. I bend over so my hair is hanging, and I scrunch upwards. It takes a pretty good amount of water out. It decreased my drying time by a full hour. After I scrunched upside down, I would stand up straight, and lean to one side so my hair was hanging again and scrunch some more. This may be something I'll need to record a video of myself doing, because it's hard to explain in words how much I scrunched. I scrunched several times all over my hair. My hair felt significantly dryer after using the towel. There were some little frizzies that popped up, so I added the LA Looks gel on top, which took care of them.

Admittedly, the result is a little frizzier than it probably would be if I had just used the products and done no scrunching. But it decreased my dry time dramatically, and to me, that's worth a couple extra frizzies. I also had no problem with second day hair after using the CurlEase towel. Here are the pictures from a go with CurlEase:

I encourage you to click on these to enlarge them to see the curls in more detail. These tiny pics don't do it justice sometimes haha


Ok now on to the Curls Like Us towel. These are super cute. I don't know what it is about the cute piping around the edges but these are just adorable. They feel like a very thick t-shirt. They are designed like a muff; an open cylinder. You put your hands in both ends and rotate it when you need a new, dry area (there's a video on your website if you're confused and curious).

I think this one is easier to use than the CurlEase. Not that the CurlEase is hard to use, but it is a big towel and could conceivably be a little cumbersome. I did the same amount of scrunching, but something strange happened. I had definitively more crunch after using the Curls Like Us towel when my hair was dry, but it took much less time to dry. This literally knocked 2 hours off my drying time. But it didn't seem to take away as much product. Very strange, but I'm ok with it!

On to the pictures. Again, click to enlarge


I'd say the results of the towels are pretty darn comparable. I think there's a little less frizz from the Curls Like Us, and Curls Like Us did a tremendous job cutting down on dry time. But the CurlEase towel did a great job as well. I'd say they're both winners, and I'll use both.

A History of and a Commentary on Shampoo and Society

That title sounds like an essay in the making. I'll try not to go too scholarly on you, but it is midterm time yet again and so my mind has been in school mode lately.

I wanted to take a post and really look at shampoo. As a strict CG-er, shampoo, which I will here define as a commercial shampoo which contains a harsh sulfate (sodium laurel sulfate [SLS], sodium laureth sulfate [SLES], ammonium laureth sulfate [ALS], etc), has not touched my hair since November 1st.

First, let's look at where the impetus for the creation of commercial shampoo comes from. The first recognized cleaning agent other than simple water is soap. Some people believe that the first soap could have been invented as early as early as 4000BC in Babylon. It is believed that Babylonian people discovered that when cooking animal meat, the fat and lard could be mixed with potash (wood ashes) to create a hard cleaning substance. The earliest soap recipe known appears on a Babylonian tablet dating from around 2200 BC (the recipe called for water, alkali, and cassia oil in case you were planning to make some ancicent Babylonian soap!).

Soap diffused from Babylonia through history into Egypt, the vast area that became the Roman Empire, and the Middle East. The Romans took soap to a new level. The Latin word for soap, sapo, appears in a text called Historia Naturalis, in which a recipe calling for tallow and ashes is given, and the resulting substances is described as a "pomade" for hair. Most soap historians agree that the Romans were fairly ignorant as to soap's detergent properties because they preferred to use a strigil (a small, curved, metal instrument) to scrape dirt and sweat from the body. Thus, at the famous Roman baths, you would not have seen bubbles of animal soaps, but rather, cold metal curved scrapers being used to clean. That doesn't sound very relaxing.

A first century Roman strigil

Modern soap emerges in Islamic history. It is in the Middle East that the detergent properties of the soap were fully appreciated, and the concept of adding scents to soap emerges. Our modern soap recipes have not changed much from the recipes used by Islamic chemists, who made soap from vegetable oils, fragrant oils, and lye. Castile soap was introduced in Europe in the 1600s, and is still popular today. Soap production levels soared with the Industrial revolution, and names such as Andrew Pears, William Gossage, and Robert Hudson appear as the soap industry giants of the modern age.

During the early 1900s, Western chemists sought to create a new product that could be cheaply manufacture but provided highly effective detergency. People found that using soap for hair care had the disadvantages of being irrating to eyes and incompatible with hard water (because it left a dull residue on hair).

The word "shampoo" first appears in the Western world after British contact with colonial India. In Hindi, the word "champo" means "head massage" (usually with some form of hair oil). The English usage of the word "shampoo" dates to 1762

The first synthetic, commercial shampoo, Drene, by Proctor and Gamble, was introduced in 1934. This was the first non-soap shampoo specifically targeted toward hair care, rather than total personal care.

An advertisment for Drene Shampoo from the 1940s

Modern commercial shampoo, containing the now sometimes controversial sulfate formulation, came on the scene in the 1960s. This is when the detergent technology we use today was formulated.

Interestingly enough, the 1970s saw a reaction against the synthetic shampoo industry. Companies began marketing "natural" shampoos, containing ingredients like eggs, jojoba oil, wheat germ oil, honey, herbs, and flowers. Labels started to make use of the worlds "natural" and "organic" and "botanical" in advertising. I find it singularly interesting that only 10 years after the introduction of mass marketed sulfate shampoo, people began to react against it (I betcha they had curly hair!)

An ad from the 1970s, when a reaction against synthetic shampoos occured, and a revial of the desire for "natural" took place

Of course, then the 80s hit, and everyone just went out dancing! Actually, from the 70s on, the only things that have really changed in the shampoo industry are the sort of trends that the indsutry goes though, like the lean toward natural, and the technology available. For example, silicones are synthetically created and are being tweaked everyday. Every so often, a new one appears and we are left to wonder about its solubility.

I find it quite telling that my grandmother was very open to my going CG. She was born in the 1930s, so her mother had lived in the era before the commercial shampoo. My mother, on the other hand, born in the 1960s, has been very much against my going CG. She agrees that there is improvement, but she sees not using shampoo as being "dirty" and she insists my scalp smells, even when I tell her how many times I've been complimented on how good my hair smells. I think it's interesting that my mother grew up in the times when shampoo was being launched into the mass market and being researched and modified, whereas my grandmother had a close connection to the time before shampoo. My mom insists you need shampoo to be clean, and my grandmother thinks it's wonderful that I'm going more natural with my hair care.

It's an interesting commentary on the way that people forget things quickly. People were clean before shampoo, but because it's become rooted in our collective conscious that shampoo is the only thing to clean hair (through the masterful advertising of shampoo companies), people just one generation away from the time before shampoo have forgotten that there was a time that was clean before shampoo.

Sham poo = fake crap

Clipping...not so much & Bargain Hunting!

So at my salon, my stylist always clips my hair along my part line before she puts me under the hood dryer. I decided that since duckbill clips were on sale at a store near me, I'd pick up some and give it a try.

Honestly, I'm not sure about clipping yet. I think I can honestly get more volume by just using the icequeen method (rinsing upside down) with much less effort. I was going to post an explanatory post about clipping with some pictures, but since I've decided I don't like clipping enough to really play with it much more (maybe later I'll be bored and I will), I'm just going to suffice it to say that I don't love it, I think it's going to take practice, and I can get similar if not better results with less effort.

On to things I'd much rather blog about, like spending money on hair products. I've made my series of what I'm calling my "Spring purchases." I'm calling them that to give me a sense of justification really haha. Although, I will say this. I'm being a very good PJ because everything that I have bought I bought as some kind of discount/bargain.

I've ordered several new things. First of all, I ordered the CurlEase towel, which USPS tells me is on the way and should be here next week. I already told you all about that bargain though. On that purchase, I saved about $10. I also got an awesome opportunity on CurlTalk's Swap Board to split a purchase of 2 sets of 2 Curls Like Us cloths. The Curls Like Us site is having a buy one set (2 towels) get a second set half price, so I split the purchase of that deal with another poster on curltalk and that way I ended up paying less (including shipping) for two towels than buying two towels would have cost without shipping! On that purchase, by splitting it, I saved about $10. Hooray bargains!

I've also read lots and lots of good things about the Curl Junkie line of products. So I ordered the Curl Fuel Spray, which is rumored to cut down on frizz on second day hair, and the Coffee Coco Curl Creme is supposedly also very good, so I ordered that as well. But because I'm still a poor college student, I ordered them off curl mart (here and here) because I can use a the coupon code "ivillage" to give me 20% off my total, which is always fabulous! So that saved me nearly $5.

All in all, when you add it up, I saved about $25 overall on my latest PJ purchases. Not too shabby! My poor hair product shelf is already getting quite crowded though, so hopefully everything I've got will fit!!

A Little Housekeeping and My Will Power (or Lack Thereof)

A couple of blog housekeeping things so to speak. I want to draw your attention to the right side panel, where I've added a lovely image from weather.com that shows the current dewpoints for the US at any given time. It's neat because the image automatically updates whenever weather.com updates it's dewpoint map. So this can be a handy place for you to quickly check your dewpoint range before you pick what products you're using, since dew points can be so useful in determining what products to use. I definitely don't want to launch into a whole post about dew points, because it's been talked up elsewhere by people who understand it better than me, so I'll give you some links:

http://pittsburghcurly.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/its-not-the-humidity-its-the-humidity/
The above is from a poster on naturallycurly who I consider to be an expert in all things dewpoint.

That really should be enough to get you through the dew point concepts and how cutting out humectants in low dew points is a good idea, and adding them in may be a good idea in higher dew points, but in case you want more reading:
http://jillipoo.blogspot.com/2008/12/cold-weather-hair-care.html

Another housekeeping issue: I've been very lax about tagging/labeling my posts lately, which might affect what results you get if you try a search. I'll be going back over old posts in the next couple of days and tagging them to correct this issue.

One more: I've always meant to go back in and add lots more links to my "Resources" section. I've now begun to do this. I'll be posting links to blogs, threads on naturally curly, and other sites that I feel are valuable reads for a curly girl. If I link something of yours and you want it taken down, just ask and I'll be happy to do so.

Ok, now that the blog housekeeping is done, on to more curly talk!

As I've noted before, I really have no will power. Once I read a glowing review about a product from a curly with hair even remotely like mine, I have to have it. This does not go well with my college budget, but eh..who needs food anyway? So long as my hair gets fed...

So my latest willpower failure is the Curl-Ease Towel. This curl towel normally sells for $20, but it's currently on sale at Aziza Beauty Supply (great site for some good CG products) and if you use the 20% coupon code (the code is MARCH) along with the sale, you can get the towel for about $14 with shipping costs which is a nice discount. A lot of curlies use this towel to either plop or use it to scrunch out extra water after applying styling products, and the word on the boards is that they can really help reduce drying time. With the humidity in the air growing by the minute as we head into spring, I'm starting to think ahead toward longer drying times and trying to think of solutions to make life easier without having to diffuse every day. So I'm intending to use the towel, which I'll hopefully get by the end of next week, to scrunch out the water from my hair and to help "set" my curls now that I do not plop anymore. More on this to come when I get my hands on it of course!

Alright well I was going to talk about my adventures in clipping today, but I think that this is a long enough post for one day. Clipping has some intense pictures to it as well, so I shall save clipping for another day! Stay tuned!

My Ultra Complicated, Fascinating, Super Secret Method for 2nd Day Hair with My Bob

I have found a super awesome product to get second day hair with my curly bob. Here's a picture of it:
Yes that's right ladies and gents. Nothing. Pineapples be damned! Scrunchies be gone! I have found that whenever I sleep on my bob, I get second day hair by simply waking up, shaking the roots a bit, and doing absolutely nothing else. I did try using my water scrunching and aloe scrunching method (scrunch water into hair with hands until wet throughout, then put a dime size puddle of aloe onto wet hands and scrunch it into your hair while upside down) and honestly it made it a little nicer, but all things considered, it's not worth the effort/drying time to do this with the bob! I can literally do nothing, and be happy with the way it looks. Sure, it's not perfect, but with this style, it's very carefree and spirited anyway, so I feel no need to work toward perfection.

So if you needed another reason to get a bob cut for spring and summer, here's one. No effort second day hair. The weather today is GORGEOUS where I am, I'm in shorts and a tank top, my hair is blowing in the breeze (of my box fan in my dorm), and I feel great with my 2nd day hair :) Life is good!

In case you don't believe me about doing nothing and having it look good, here are pictures. Note, this is after walking around for several hours (showing a friend of mine who is a junior in high school looking at colleges to apply to my university) on a breezy day.

Square 1...only better!

As I'm sure you know if you're reading this, a couple days ago I chopped off my length and got myself a curly bob. While I completely love it, I'm sort of back at square one with styling. I've got to relearn what my hair wants, not in terms of ingredients because obviously it's still the same hair coming out of my head, but in terms of styling techniques. I'm going to devote the next couple of posts to various styling methods I've tried in the past and methods I'm playing with now that my hair is quite short!

The biggest adjustment in my styling so far has been ditching plopping. I love plopping. My mom tells me I look like Aunt Jemima when I plop. I even made a video about how I use a long sleeve cotton t-shirt to plop (link is on the right side panel if you didn't see it). I credit plopping with enhancing my curl formation and helping the drying process along a little bit. I would generally plop immediately after applying all of my products for about 30 mins to an hour, depending on how much time I had.

However, now that my hair is short, I can just tell that if I attempted a plop, the curls wouldn't sit in the shirt right when I put in the plop, and I predict I'd end up with quite smushed curls.

Thus, I made the decision to give up plopping for this length. The results have actually been very good.

I definitely lost a little bit of curliness with the length loss, which is a hallmark of my 2c/3a status (we tend to get curlier hair when it's longer). However, I have found that with some good scrunching with my product application, I am still getting some good curl.

Basically, scrunching for me has temporarily replaced plopping. I obviously scrunched in products before, but I am now finding that at this length it is better to rely on scrunching for curl formation rather than plopping because the plop would be messy and all over the place, leading to smushed curls.

So that is my first major method change. In my next post, I'll talk about 2nd day hair. My hair is not long enough to pineapple (or put up at all for that matter!), so I will tell you what has replaced pineappling in my styling methodology.
This is my hair styled today. I used Giovanni Tea Triple Treat Shampoo (had to low poo to get out the a-cone from my Deva styling when I got it cut), conditioned with L'oreal Vive Pro Nutri Gloss, then combed it, then applied BotticelliBabe's flax seed gel (my one and only product that requires no other products along with it for great results!) via raking and then scrunching. I used lots of it because you just can't overdo it with that product. I then just fixed my part and let it airdry. Took a couple of hours, which is about on par for what I expected. This is what it looks like tonight. Tomorrow, I'll be using my 2nd day hair technique and I'll post a picture or two of how it turns out.

I Did It! Introducing my curly BOB!

I'm so happy with it! It's so light and bouncy right now! This is my new hair cut, styled with Deva products (she used low poo, one-c, and angell) and a fancy hood dryer, so it won't look like this again but I think that the shape is really fun and flirty and I'm excited to style it on my own! Boyfriend is still in a little shock, but he'll get used to it :P

Anyway on to the important thing! Pictures! Don't forget that you can click on them to enlarge them and see more detail!
So to anyone who wants a curly bob but is a little nervous or scared, DO IT! I'm so excited and thrilled about it :)

Giovanni 50:50 Conditioner, Lustrasilk Revisted, and Haircut Jitters

I just got my wisdom teeth out (all 4...yuck!) on Tuesday so I've been a little out of commission but I thought I'd update you lovely curlies as I recoup on the couch at home with my darling kitties!

I live in a mid-Atlantic state and we got fairly blasted by that winter storm early in the week. 10 inches, which is unheard of for our area, which hasn't seen snow in 3 years! I'm quite jealous that the local schools got 3 full snow days the year after I graduated, but since I'm on my college spring break, I guess I would have been off this week no matter what.

I was planning on doing lots of hair experimenting this week since the wisdom teeth procedure meant I'd be home and not going out. However, mother nature had other plans for my recovery time. The snow storm knocked out our hot water heater, and I might be a trooper in the wisdom teeth area (the recovery has been wonderfully easy), but I hate hate hate cold showers! My mom managed to brave the cold and take a couple of what she called "girl scout showers," hearkening back to her days as a girl scout of the 70s with camp showers from hoses. I, on the hand, refused to bend, and spent the three days without hot water on the couch with my pain meds not showering or doing anything with my hair. Not fun!

But our water is back now, and before my wisdom teeth procedure I tried the root curl experiment, which worked very well for volume and of course root curl but I wanted to back track a bit and talk about a couple of products I've been using lately.

In my new search for some readily available, glycerin-free products, I came across a bottle of Giovanni 50:50 Conditioner at my local Kroger and decided to give it a whirl. I'd read some good things about it on naturally curly, and this stuff is really nice! It's very moisturizing to me, but it seems to be a good option as a glycerin-free, richer conditioner for winter. I've been using it in place of Aubrey Organic's Honeysuckle Rose because that stuff is just so strong that I'm afraid of overconditioning! But if you're looking for a moisturizing rinse-out that has no glycerin I'd recommend this one. It leaves my hair feeling very silky and the scent is very very subtle to me (a nice break from the sometimes overpowering AOHR). I tried this with the root curl method of the last post and it worked really well for that. Just a heads up about a nice, CG, winter conditioner that to me is much milder on many levels than my Aubrey Organic's Honeysuckle Rose.

Also, I have revisted Lustrasilk. After my blech results from the Shea and Mango variety, I was reluctant to waste a wash if the Olive Oil variety ended up giving me similar blechness (there I go being technical again!). However, with my recent discovery that glycerin is no good for me in lower dewpoints, I had no choice with my love of leave ins but to find a suitable glycerin free leave in. I've found that I much prefer the Olive Oil variety, even though the smell is very chemically to my nose. I can't use this every time; it's just a little too much for me I think. However, it works in the rotation.


So there you are curlies. A little update from a recovering curly. I'm currently getting my money's worth out of my tub of Olive Oil Lustrasilk and Giovanni 50:50 conditioner. These two products, along with my suave conditioner for cowashing, my Boots curl creme, and KCCC have formed up a pretty solid winter routine which seems to be working well for me in these horrendous dewpoints.

Also, big news which has been in the making in the last few weeks! I'm getting my haircut TOMORROW!! Ack! I'm so nervous. I'm planning on going for a curly bob if I don't chicken out! I'm honestly more scared of getting my hair cut than I was about going under general anethesia for my wisdom teeth procedure, much to my boyfriend's amusement! I honestly believe that hair cuts are so traumatic for us poor curlies (even though I know I'm in good hands because I go to a wonderful, curly friendly salon) that we should be given the option of being asleep during the "procedure!" Send me some good curly vibes please! I'll post with results and pictures just as soon as I get home! I promise!