Forum Activity for @ethon-obrien

Eyes Opened (my twist and rip timeline, with some mistakes in the middle)

Saved Dreads Success Stories

I have just got to say that i started off with SO many bad habits. I made my locs with twist and rip and made so many mistakes with them. if i can figure out how to do that timeline here right now ill show you. trust me, the story has a happy ending

Here is what they looked like immediately after i made them. Knew nothing of what to do to them, and honestly, that's how it should have stayed, then they woudlnt have went through what they did

they are minutes old here

Then i waxed the one and only time. Realized without help that that was just not helping them lock and i have always HATED the feel of grease and stuff in my hair. see how nasty and matted they look?

few days in

heres where it finally started to dry up and wash out

then i started crocheting, big mistake. its harmful in general but much more for twist and rip as i learned. for so long i wondered why my locs were made in nearly 40 sections and yet they were as thin as if id made 100. but i was tightening them and didnt know it.

this was about a month in and about two and a half weeks or so into the crocheting

then i blunted the tips here which i intend to do again but not til theyre mature. in the meantime im lovin the look they have

Now here's where i combined a few of them thinking that would solve the thickness issue.

bout a month and a week or month and a half in

Here's what they looked like after they were fully combined down to 29 now

Here's where i made a big mistake. in another effort to thicken them, knowing i couldnt spare anymore to combine, i shortened them using a crochet hook. basically bunching them up, pulling them into themselves then tightening them from the side.

Lucky for me some of the length came back when i washed them

Now here's the happy ending, well not really the end, ill be posting more along the timeline as they mature. they just now turned a full two months. but here is where i have finally stopped putting in endless effort on blunting the tips and stopped harming them by crocheting the bodies. i absolutely love how they look here. so much more healthy

these were taken just now as im first making this timeline. i have come a long way and learned so much in the short two months ive had these locs

they look amazing and i cannot wait until they fatten up, they are gonna get so thick with these so few sections, and that was exactly what i wanted, nice fat ones. anyway ill be adding more as they mature by the month. in the meantime here's a few of the tams and things i have for them which i love

these were all crocheted by my brother throughout my dreading process

my first tam

second one, rasta colored, haha i love it

theres my camo dread band (keep in mind these were made when i was still crochething them)

and last but not least my newest beanie.

thanks for all the advice everyone. cant wait to show you the (natural) progress of my locs. absolutely loving their healthy look

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ok nearly 3 month update. you may notice they look like crap now. thatd be because the crocheting has finally wore off and so ive pretty much undone all the damage i did to the dreading process.

its a good thing though. im so excited to see how they dread on their own. i pulled at em very gently and a bunch of the hairs just slipped apart. which tells me their solidity was only due to the weaving of the crochet hook. so i took that apart as much as possible. they look about the same as they did when i first started, which from what ive seen from other timelines, is very approrpriate for the small amount of time theyve been in.

also you may notice, i have a ....drumroll.....CONGO!!! haha

also happen to have more dreads. nearly all the ones i combined intentionally before have separated, with a little help but they were already coming apart. im up to 39. so now ill be able to congo as they get longer. the one congo i already have was from one that didnt quite separate all the way down. but i love it haha.

ok so we're at a lil over 3 and a half months now, i have more than ever and they look better than ever. i wish id never made the mistakes ive made and they could be even better by now

first i wanna show off my new dread wraps haha

now here's how my dreads look now, along with the new method i learned to tie them back more effectively (may seem simple but i hadnt thought of it haha. id been tyin them at the bottom back)

i absolutely love how much fuller they look. also (as i said in another discussion) i am keeping the tips loose. watch the timeline for the next change, all good ones from now on

ok so i am long overdue for an update. it's been a year and 1 month now. over the few months after my last update i undid alot of the dreads and some i re-twist and ripped, others i left loose to form naturally. i cant figure out how to post pics the way i used to on here though. seems to have changed. now you can only attatch them it looks like. anyone know how or if you can still post them the way i did the others? i wanna be able to post more than 3

updated by @ethon-obrien: 02/14/15 03:08:32PM

diary of a dread abuser

Help! Save My Dreads

haha a little dramatic but makes some good points. i never got too far into wax and all that but i did crochet them heavily for a while. only waxed once, realized immediately it was counterintuitive to my locking. im only two months in and am now successfully loosening my dreads by daily washings for a while. soon theyll be nice and loose to dread on their own. this site definitely helped me alot too.

as dreads mature and smooth out, do they get thinner or thicker?

Introduce Yourself

wow. mine are less than two months old and i only have 30 dreads. cant wait to see how thick they get

Eva Lovelocks said:

my tnr have tripled in thickness since i started. they are 5 months old. i have 60something dreads and undreaded bangs that would make into like 8 dreads. at first i thought they were going to be really thin, but pretty much all are at least pointer finger thickness now!

as dreads mature and smooth out, do they get thinner or thicker?

Introduce Yourself

well what i did was make them stick out at a horizontal angle from the dread and pull it in basically bunchin it up inside it. but i dont think id recommend this anymore. ive no severe loss or weakening of the dreads but i have had some balls of hair come out from accidental ripping and stuff and theres just lots of loose hair. so i think im startin to think soaring eagle is right and just gonna let them go natural from this point on.

Yogisunshine said:

Hey there,

When you do this are you just kind of weaving the loose hair in and out using the small millimeter hook? i've seen this done before and was curious how it works?

Ethon O'Brien said:

yeah but i dont tighten them at all with the crochet needles, i just brine the loose hairs in gently so theres not a crazy amount of loose hair

soaring eagle said:

crochet needle would be a huge mistake never crochet dreasds not only would u do severe damage but they would get thinner.. it makes them way too tight and stiff so they are 1/3 the thickness so u bunch up 3 u end with 12 the size u started with

my god this whole thread or whatever you call this here has been so amazingly helpful. my dreads are twist and rip and i really wanted thick dreads but i didnt want to sacrafice length with backcombing. i was concerned about the thickness so much because theyre about a month and a half old but fairly thin and theres only 33 of them. i started off with 40 and combined a few in an attempt to make them thicker, it got rid of some of the really thin ones but none of them are that real fatness i want. i had been planning to kinda bunch them up with the crochet needle at a certain length to thicken them later on but it is just such a load off to know that after a few months theyll get thicker on their own. plus if the size of the sections truly determines the thickness of the dread that means mine are gonna be nice and fat. cant wait. thank you all so much for these posts, i love this site

Raegan Belew said:

thanks so much for all the tips...I started mine out super duper thin, like pencil size at the roots because I figured they'd thicken up. Also, my "dreads" thin out so much toward the tip (my hair is long) that I can't even twist em so I just let the tips stay natural and figure they'll knot up on their own as the dreads thicken up....so it's possible to just let a couple of em' combine down the line if they're too thin? Hopin' so cuz I don't want to comb any of these out! I already had to do it twice and it's a pain in the arse! So...just waitin' to see if they do thicken up as they knot:)

as dreads mature and smooth out, do they get thinner or thicker?

Introduce Yourself

yeah but i dont tighten them at all with the crochet needles, i just brine the loose hairs in gently so theres not a crazy amount of loose hair

soaring eagle said:

crochet needle would be a huge mistake never crochet dreasds not only would u do severe damage but they would get thinner.. it makes them way too tight and stiff so they are 1/3 the thickness so u bunch up 3 u end with 12 the size u started with

my god this whole thread or whatever you call this here has been so amazingly helpful. my dreads are twist and rip and i really wanted thick dreads but i didnt want to sacrafice length with backcombing. i was concerned about the thickness so much because theyre about a month and a half old but fairly thin and theres only 33 of them. i started off with 40 and combined a few in an attempt to make them thicker, it got rid of some of the really thin ones but none of them are that real fatness i want. i had been planning to kinda bunch them up with the crochet needle at a certain length to thicken them later on but it is just such a load off to know that after a few months theyll get thicker on their own. plus if the size of the sections truly determines the thickness of the dread that means mine are gonna be nice and fat. cant wait. thank you all so much for these posts, i love this site

Raegan Belew said:

thanks so much for all the tips...I started mine out super duper thin, like pencil size at the roots because I figured they'd thicken up. Also, my "dreads" thin out so much toward the tip (my hair is long) that I can't even twist em so I just let the tips stay natural and figure they'll knot up on their own as the dreads thicken up....so it's possible to just let a couple of em' combine down the line if they're too thin? Hopin' so cuz I don't want to comb any of these out! I already had to do it twice and it's a pain in the arse! So...just waitin' to see if they do thicken up as they knot:)

as dreads mature and smooth out, do they get thinner or thicker?

Introduce Yourself

my god this whole thread or whatever you call this here has been so amazingly helpful. my dreads are twist and rip and i really wanted thick dreads but i didnt want to sacrafice length with backcombing. i was concerned about the thickness so much because theyre about a month and a half old but fairly thin and theres only 33 of them. i started off with 40 and combined a few in an attempt to make them thicker, it got rid of some of the really thin ones but none of them are that real fatness i want. i had been planning to kinda bunch them up with the crochet needle at a certain length to thicken them later on but it is just such a load off to know that after a few months theyll get thicker on their own. plus if the size of the sections truly determines the thickness of the dread that means mine are gonna be nice and fat. cant wait. thank you all so much for these posts, i love this site

Raegan Belew said:

thanks so much for all the tips...I started mine out super duper thin, like pencil size at the roots because I figured they'd thicken up. Also, my "dreads" thin out so much toward the tip (my hair is long) that I can't even twist em so I just let the tips stay natural and figure they'll knot up on their own as the dreads thicken up....so it's possible to just let a couple of em' combine down the line if they're too thin? Hopin' so cuz I don't want to comb any of these out! I already had to do it twice and it's a pain in the arse! So...just waitin' to see if they do thicken up as they knot:)

crochet to natural

Dreading Methods

actually im washing them every day for a while and its already almost completely loosened em up. . and i know blunt tips make em dry slower but i just prefer them. little extra blowdryin i think is worth it for the look of em

soaring eagle said:

crochet backfires they will be 1/3 the size a healthy dread will be and the 'solid" at 2 months means they have to loosen up a ton to start to dread..in 6 months tio a year

you delayed dreading drasticly and blunted tips means dry way sk[]lower too

they will thicken up..eventually byut u got a long time to wait

crochet to natural

Dreading Methods

mine were tnred and crocheted but i dont really anymore, now i just keep the tips blunted (i just like how it looks and how they dont come loose at the ends that way) but other than that im letting them do their own thing. at nearly two months, seriously hopin they thicken up. ive only got 30 sections and was goin for a thick dread look. this site seems to say theyll thicken up on their own but right now theyre just stayin super tight after ive stopped. i mean its cool how theyre solid after this short time and theyre very strong (but ive got very thick hair so..) anyway im hopin they get thicker soon. theyre way too thin for how few there are

OK blunting tips make dreads lock better?

Dread Maintenance

thanks. ill remember that. this site and soaring eagle have taught me alot, but i do have to differ in one area, i do prefer the blunted tips simply cause i just like how they look better, but in the meantime, im just gonna leave them alone and let them do their thing until theyre mature. i just dont like the little curls on the end, cuase my hair was very curly before the dreads. though that helps the locking. so anyway yeah just gonna let them do what they want now until they mature and fatten up (cant wait for that) and then ill blunt the tips at that point. thanks everyone

taye said:

Be patient Ethon. I remember how my dreads looked in the early stages. I just made a conscious decision to ignore my head. I rarely looked at myself in the mirror except to brush my teeth. I don't even have a lot of pictures of my head from that time. I kinda wish i did. I see so many people that start dreads and comb them out way before they mature. because they don't have the patience to wait that awkward phase out. and remember the less you do to your hair...the healthier your knots will be

OK blunting tips make dreads lock better?

Dread Maintenance

i thought that might be whats necessary. just havin a hard time waiting and dealing with how they look haha. but i suppose its necessary with this method. thanks for the tips soaring eagle and taye