Baby It's Cold Outside

Darn you Southern Texas, Southern Florida, and Parts of California!

Brr. I'm cold. And my roommate insists on leaving our window open at night because she's psycho and from Pennsylvania. I don't remember the last time I was warm in my room.

But ranting about annoying roommate issues aside, it really is cold where I am right now and there are low dewpoints to match. I confess I had stopped checking dewpoints for several weeks because I was just having fun playing with products. I think it may be time to get back down to business though.

There are lots of fabulous articles out there on dewpoint and what it means for your hair. A couple of my favorites:
http://pittsburghcurly.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/its-not-the-humidity-its-the-humidity/
http://coloradocurly.wordpress.com/dew-point/

To sum up the highlights, low dewpoints mean that products with humectants high up on the ingredients list will actual faciliate moisture leaving your hair rather than staying in it. This can results in dryness, poof, and fuzzyness (such scientific terms I use!)

I've been dutifully avoiding any thought about humectants all winter, and I think that my hair is starting to pay the price for my ignorance is bliss attitude. Lately I've been, dry, poofy, frizzy, and fuzzy.

I'm thinking it may be time for me to look into severely limiting my glycerin usage. Unfortunately, just about all my favorites have it in them. There are some good standby's that are glycerin-free however. I can switch my suave coconut for VO5, put the LVPNG gloss on hold in favor of glycerin free AOHR, and I can use glycerin free styling products like boots, Lustrasilk, Giovanni DLI, and Herbal Essences Totally Twisted Gel (a CG remnant from my non-CG days...I often forget about this little purple tube shoved in the back of my hair shelf). Although I used suave and LVPNG today, I did use all glycerin free styling products. Hopefully this will help me get some gloss and definition back.

My Perfect Winter Rinse Out

I like to think of my shower as my own little steamy think tank. I use my shower time to unwind, to think through what's coming up in the next couple of days, and to sort through deep and thought provoking questions. One of the latter popped into my mind in a shower about a week ago: If I love the slip and little bit of protein of L'oreal Vive Pro Nutri Gloss and I love the rich moisture of Aubrey Organics Honeysuckle Rose, what would happen if I combined the two?

The result of this process is my dream winter rinse out.

I started a thread on curltalk asking if anyone ever mixed rinse outs. To my surprise, people apparently do this all the time, but I got more responses that indicated that people would layer rinse out rather than what I meant: literal mixing.

So I thought I'd just answer my own question and experiment.

I took half my normal amount of LVPNG in my hand, then I put the same amount of AOHR, and I used my finger to swirl them together (real scientific, huh?). At first, it looks a little lumpy/cottage cheesy. But with some more blending, something magical happened. The smells joined together so that I could detect both but they were somehow intermingled, and the faint pink cottage cheese blended to a smooth, sparkly white that reminds me of cupcake icing. It feels very rich and little heavy, but I know that if my fine 2c/3a hair didn't get weighed down, it wasn't that heavy.

Ladies, if you have these two conditioners, you have to try mixing them! My hair has never felt so soft and well moisturized post-rinse out. When it's rinsing out, it feels like silk. It's really incredible. It looks like I actually get the best of both worlds: amazing slip courtesy of LVPNG and an injection of moisture from AOHR. Really great stuff. If I had a big enough bottle, I would make a batch of it.