Why does no one else call them singles?

I now have single plaits - or box braids to seemingly the rest of the world - for the time being so no hair experiments but it's a hell of a lot less hassle. You can see them in my profile picture. My hair is too short for simple pinned up styles and that seems to be where my talent lies...

At the minute I just wash them once a week with leftover Avalon Organics Lavender Shampoo and Tresemmé Naturals Vibrantly Smoothing Conditioner but I'm in no position to see how it affects my actual hair. Ho hum.

This post isn't very interesting if I just talk about my hair at the minute. So life stuff! Back to university and again I feel the first flushes of enthusiasm for the term's work which is brilliant and I will hopefully maintain this time. Also the Terrifying Spectre of Examination looms high above all proceedings but I suppose that if I work hard from now until the end of term I should be fine. All my society stuff seems to be going swimmingly so far; President of our university's Stop the Traffik group (which works to stop human traffiking) and still trying too start up an upcycling group (which repurposes stuff that would otherwise go to landfill).

That's all I have to say for now.

How have you been?

Dry hair BEGONE

Well that's the idea anyway. I co-washed my hair with Tresemme Naturals Vibrantly Smooth Conditioner and did something new with my leave-ins! This is what I do with my Friday evenings (I know I'm way cool).

It wasn't my idea though; the technique is outlined here at the wonderful kisforkinky.com. Anyhoo what you do is apply a water based leave in and immediately follow it with a creamy one and then seal this with oil. My hair is generally kind of wiry feeling and since I don't really know my texture yet I kind of thought that was normal...

This is an experiment to see if it's at all possible for my hair to cottony soft. At the moment i have high hopes but we shall see. I used Naked Miracle worker as my water based leave in - Naked is a good brand all '97% natural' and against animal testing so I was keen to give it a try - and Lush R&B for creamy. My hair really liked R&B on it's own early in my transition but I guess hair has it's whims. Oh and I sealed with castor oil because I'm unwilling to gouge into my new bottle of Vatika oil tonight. Coconut oil should always be sold in jars. The bottle I bought is really small and cute though so it's hard to stay mad at it.

I can''t wait for my hair to dry so I can admire its downy softness see if this technique has worked out for me.

In other news I am utterly failing at NaNoWriMo and am going on a Alpha course retreat tomorrow which should be interesting. NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write a fifty thousand word novel in the month of November... I got close in college with about thirty but this year I'm dragging my heels at a measly three thousand.

The Alpa course is for atheists, agnostics and new Christians to better understand the religion. Predictably it's brought up more questions than it answers. But I'll see how it goes. I'm a spiritual journey and all that malarkey.

I think I'm going to stop writing now.

The Beginning

That is where people traditionally start, right?

I'm a black girl in the UK, who is, perhaps foolishly, attempting to grow her to waist length, and longer if at all possible. I've done considerable amounts of research online and it seems it is possible for women of my hair texture. I know a lot of black girls seem to think they can't get past shoulder length, so i hope to help inspire a few of them.

There also don't seem to be many of these blogs specifically in the UK... The only blog I have found so far is AfroDeityUK (check it out!) but I may be wrong.

Are any of you trying to grow your hair? Any hints or tips to share?

Bye for now,

Olli