Hey there o/
Well, .. what to say , where to start.
I live in the UK, Kent to be exact .. I'm half norwegian on my mothers side, hence the viking reference 
I went back to college a few years ago and trained as a massage and beauty therapist, doing things like sweedish massage, stone massage, manicures, pedicures.. etc. Ideally I would love to say that this pays my way, but if im to be honest I've so far lacked the necessary confidence and motivation to put myself out there and make it my life.
I have a young daughter called Ellie who is three.. and a half (Halfs are important when your three, toddler months are like dog years :] ) I also have a stubborn, hyperactive but ultimately brilliant dog named Jess, two bearded dragons called ron& hermione, and a rat .. named angelo.
I've always been drawn to things that might be considered counter culture, spiritual, esoteric, eccentric, and i think its that inclination that set my path to locks.
My dread story
Started my journey some 12 years ago when i was involved in the spiritual rave scene and looked up to those around me and was particularly fascinated by dreads, in my youthful haste i rushed down to an afro caribbean salon and asked for dreadlocks, looking back on it they seemed a little taken back by me .. but was happy to take my money all the same. They sectioned my hair and twisted it with beeswax ( i think ) , they were awful for a good long time, greasy, wax dropping off all over the place, stiff as a board, smelly and sticky.. about a year later i went on holiday and did alot of swimming in the sea and pools, this seemed to remove alot of the wax and my hair started to dread nicely... until i met a girl, who wasnt mad on the locks... so i cut them off.
Fast forward a decade of different hair styles and taking several paths trying to find myself, and i find myself in a relationship that ends because of the girl finding out i smoke cannabis( thats a different story:P ), try as i might to argue that smoking weed did not define me as a person she couldnt accept that and we split. Previous to that i had told her that in the past i had worn dreadlocks, to which she also had a stigmatized perception of. It was at that moment that i decided, I'd had enough of worrying about what people thought, and trying to bend my character to their will in desperation for having the perception of being liked and gaining the feeling of acceptance, love even. And so it was time to return to what i wanted for myself, how i saw myself, with dreads. Allthough it was another in a long list of impulsive, reactionary and rebelistic decisions, i still feel that it was the right decision for the right reasons.
So onto the present and my dreads now, I found a website, the gallery looked great .. i thought, wow what wonderfull looking mature neat dreads, I read the website which told me a method called crochet was used .. It sounded wonderfull to me no wax etc, and so went ahead and booked an appointment and bought myself some extra hair and sent it to the lady to make me some extensions, had the dreadlocks put in ( 5 hours of relative agony ) I was quite pleased with them, but actually i can admit now that straight away i wasnt happy .. i felt like i had cheated myself. I've stuck with them for about four months, having one "maintenance" appointment two months in.
I thought that as time went on the dreads might settle down, become flat and soft instead of rock hard and barbed.. that didnt happen, i thought it would help to have nice plump dreads, my own hair dreaded twice as thin as the extenions, it looked odd. I thought the pain and itchyness would subside, it didnt much, the worst part is that they would pull some hair through from the root and make it really tight , pulling on my scalp .. whilst leaving another part of the section loose or twisted.
I woke up one morning and decided that was it, and started to untangle the extensions.. realising this would take forever i cut the majority of them off, leaving about an inch of extension and all of my natural hair.. Im currently in the process of undoing all of the crochet, both extension and own hair, .. im using nothing other than my fingers separting the hair like you would with a plait and what i call "twizzling" them between my thumb and forefinger, its taken me days so far and my fingers are rather sore.. but i shall strive on patiently with a quiet determination to get to myself back natural. Its nice because i get the feeling that im taking control of mysellf, but in order to let go.
Anyhow, My intention is to make fresh dreads one by one as i take the old crochet out, I've completely untangled one dread at this point and am well onto the second but wanted to twist and rip this first one before i finish the second since i like how the sections are.
I was looking through the dreaducation and found the link to a tutorial on how to correctly twist and rip, but it wasnt working. Could somebody direct me to it please? ... I did find some videos on you-tube but they had conflicting ideas about how it should be done.
If you just read all of that, you deserve a medal!
Many thanks in advance.
-Alex.
P.S. I think the website is absolutely brilliant, the dreaducation page has clearly had alot of effort put into it and from what ive browsed seems adorned with lovely people.
updated by @vikingalex: 01/31/15 08:00:26PM
