I'm Turning Into an Aloe Junkie!

I remember when I was a kid growing up in Arizona, I used to love to take the potted aloe plants we had around our pool and our patios and break off a small bit of a steam and play with the "goo" that came out. I probably never [intentionally] put it into my hair.

But now, 8 years after leaving the desert behind, I've rediscovered the "goo" that I used to find so fascinating. As I said in my last post, I recently picked up a tube of Lily of the Desert AVG with the help of my wonderful boy (he's allowed to have a car at his college). I tried it yesterday as a second day scruncher and had fantastic resutls, so today I tried a different experiment.

After my wash, I took half of the amount of Kinky Curly Knot Today (KCKT) that I would normally use (so half of a quarter) and put that in my palm. Then I took my LOTD and made up the missing half of the quarter with that. I then swirled the mix of half aloe half KCKT in my palm, then rubbed my hands together and raked the mix through. I scrunched it a tiny bit when I was done, then scrunched in my Kinky Curly Curling Custard (KCCC). I plopped for about 45 mins then air dried for about an hour and a half.

Though I was skeptical at first because much of the slip of the KCKT was obliviated by the aloe when I was raking it through, the results are fantastic!! Here are some pictures. I'm hoping the curl factor is due more to the aloe than the high dewpoint (58F) and the rain.

Exams are burning me...maybe I should try some aloe...

I love terrible puns in blog titles!

Anyhoo, it is that time that any college student, curly or not, dreads. Exam weeks *dun dun dun*
Thus I have not been able to update you lately on what's going on with my hair. Unfortunately, I do not have a ton of time today to do this either, but my exams will be over on the 15th and then I'll have a month to experiment with hair things (hooray!)

Today, however, I did pick up something new. I went to the grocery store with my boyfriend who was in town for a few days and while I was there I picked up some Lily of the Desert Aloe Vera Gel. I had heard good things on curltalk about aloe in all kinds of ways: mixed with leave-ins, under gels, in refreshed sprays, for second day hair scrunched in with water, etc etc. So I decided that out of all those ways I'd probably be able to find at least one way that works well for me.

I decided to try it as a scrunch in for 2nd day hair. I washed yesterday via my normal routine and had a great hair day. My second day hair when I woke up this morning was much worse than usual because for some reason a lot of my hair had fallen out of the pineapple overnight. I wet my hands and scrunched water all over like I normally do for 2nd day hair. Then once I was finished water scrunching, I scrunched in about 3 drop sized globs onto one side of my hair in the same way I apply KCCC (see mysteryflavored's video). I repeated for the other side, then again upside down. I wasn't really expecting a miracle because 1) I didn't use too much and 2) my 2nd day hair was off to a very bad start from the beginning anyway.

So the results? A miracle!!!

Here's before I did anything to it:




















Very frizzy and tangly and a mess!

And here's after...















Got quite a bit of the curl back and much much much less frizz!!!! I'm quite happy with this result, especially considering what I started with! So I'm quite looking forward to experimenting with aloe in lots of other ways. I think next time I wash I'll mix it in with my leave in. Maybe this will fix my elongation problem with giovanni :o We shall have to wait and see. Until next time, to my fellow college curlies: good luck with exams!!