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hey all!! i still have been seborrheic dermatitis and dandruff nightmares! i'm am trying the baking soda rinse once again for 3 weeks this time to see if my scalp will adjust if i give it a bit more time. but if after 3 weeks my scalp is still a nightmare i'm going to give this shampoo and possibly the conditioner a go!! http://www.trustnature.com/organic-excellence/shampoo-conditioner.html 
feedback on what you guys reckon about this shampoo and condtioner would be very handy!
So, it's 2pm, August 11th here, and it has officially been one year since I've started dreading.
I actually did not know if I should even write and post anything since I've grown so comfortable with not brushing and basically not giving a damn about my hair, just letting it do it's thing, but I decided to do it anyways. They've been trying sooo hard during the past year, they deserve some credit. :D But since I did not give enough of a damn to take pictures on a regular basis, I will just make a kind of a timeline using what I can find on my computer.
So. After numerous start-and-comb-after-a-few-weeks-to-months, I have finally decided not to mess around, and that if I should do it, I should do it right. So last August, I told myself this will be my final attempt at dreading. If I comb them out this time, that's it. No more attempts.
I gave it my last shot. This is me at the beginning, 15 days in or so.
This is what my hair looked like at the 1 month mark.
Right about then, I got frustrated. I was always an overachiever in everything I wanted to do. I was known for failing many subjects inhigh school, but that was solely due to my not caring about them. But I always did things I wanted to do very good, and very quickly. So having the desire for my hair to dread, but it not doing anything, and me not being able to make it tangle faster was something I had a really hard time dealing with. My own hair was failing.
After awhile, I learned to accept it all. Maybe I wasn't as in control as I thought I was, but by New Year's, that was okay.
And this is a photo from the New Year's Eve, four months in. As you can see, nothing happened. :D
Speeding up again, we come to May 6th, which is St. George's day, a holiday my family celebrates. (Orthodox Christian families celebrate one saint, and it is carried down through family by men. So my grandfather, my great grandfather, and all men before him celebrated St. George. That's not really important for the timeline, and it wouldn't even be important for me, if it weren't for my entire family gathering at my grandma's house for the occasion.)
You can't really see much on this photo, but this is the best one I've got of the sectioning that happened by then.
And the side-view...
FF again, we come to 10 months!
By this time, I started changing what I wash my hair with. Having hard water, I couldn't use BS, and there are no dreadlock shampoos or bars here. Also, I can't find any clarifying or residue free shampoos. So I figured, if BS removes the residue from hair, it will do the same thing if added to a shampoo. So I started adding BS directly to the bottle, to the point where there are layers of liquid in the bottle, the bottom layer is the thickest, the one above less so, and so on. It works pretty well, I've had crazy loopiness happening since, each and every one of them has at least one loop now.
Loopies about a month ago - they've changed a lot since then.
And, that would be all. I do not have any one-year-mark photos, since my SD card reader died, and I cannot put any photos on my computer, let alone on the internet. I'll post them when I find a way.
As you can see, they are not even close to being mature. But I'm okay with it. I love the messiness, and even if they stay like this forever, I won't mind. But they are changing, so I know I will eventually have real dreads.
All in all, I posted this mainly for people who are frustrated with their hair to see they are not the only ones with slow progress, and that not combing for a year and still not having dreads does happen to people. It might even make someone who is on, let's say, 5. month mark feel better about those few loose hairs and 6 strands of normal hair. :D
Even if it is dreading extremely slow, letting your hair go can teach you so many things... I'm extremely happy I threatened myself a year ago and stuck to dreading this time. Though I can't see my hair developing much, I can see how much I have grown and developed, and that's the most important thing to me.
When I see others with dreadlocks I feel a sort of bond, do you feel it too? especially if they're as messy or messier than mine. I think it's really cool because I never really felt that with normal hair. I didn't really notice if another person had curly brown hair similar to mine or i at least didn't feel as if we were connected in some way. When i was in Puerto Rico there was a lot of people with dreads and there were a few moments where we would recognize that we had dreads. People sold dreads beads on the street and offered to make dreadlocks on people. It was the same way at Ocean City, along with friendly gestures of approval from others with dreadlocks. There was a store and all of the employers had dreadlocks (except this little kid who worked there). They offered to make dreadlocks but it was $100 an hour and I feel like it shouldn't be that much because you can get dreadlocks for free. Anyways it's really cool to meet and see other people with dreads just because it's so rare for me to see them. I only know one person in my area that currently has dreadlocks. On another note, I have two pet peeves from those commenting on my dreads: when people ask "how long have you been TRYING to grow dread locks" i feel like they already are dreadlocks, they're pretty tight and you can tell that they're dreads from far away. When they say trying it's like Im putting effort into making them look a certain way but i guess it's because they have one image of the way dread locks are suppose to look like. And when they say "your dreads are sticking out" this happens when i put my hair to the side of my head so it doesn't fall flat on my head like normal hair. Those are just two that I've been noticing recently, it's fine that they say that because I mean i guess they're just making conversation (?)
Just got back from town and NONE of the shops had any apple cider vinegar, not impressed, not even a little bit. So I bought distiled malt (the clear one) insted, thinking that the ACV wash is to 'level' back out the PH in your hair. The acidity in the vinegar is the same, its just the smell that might be a problem so i was going to add a few drops of tea tree oil or something similar to get rid of the chip shop vibe.
Safe journey till next time
xXx
Hello everyone - I am new to the site!
I started my dreadlock journey the last weekend of June. I sectioned all of my hair into 1 inch sections or so, back combed them, and just let them go naturally after that. I do rip them occasionally, however, so they don't fuse together.
My only problem is, I sometimes feel like they are too thin, and that they will not get larger. I am a blonde, and my hair is naturally pretty thin and fine, and it was only about shoulder length when I started my dreading process.
People keep telling me to be patient, that they will keep locking and get larger.. but I wonder if I should combine some of them to make them larger... am I worrying for nothing?
Your advice and guidance would be much appreciated!
x0x0 ~ NAMASTE ~ <3
I've been living on the big island for almost a month n half now. My fiance and I are still "getting things together" and have only a pickup which I can't drive... so I've been anxious to get some wheels so I can enjoy this beautiful place.
Being here is what triggered my thoughts of beginning my dreads again, and I finally got the big inspiration to do them when I saw a friend do hers on facebook. And so my second set is a week underway, TnR and I love them dearly.
I've been bummed lately as I've been waiting for the right bike to help me get to the farmer's market and the water, but nothing I saw really felt right and unfortunately, because of the ocean, things rust so easily here. I wanted something that hadn't already seen better days... at least not enough to matter.
But today was the day! I finally found my bike, though it was online and I was hoping for a local deal, I was still quite pleased to find a nice used one that was just what I'd been looking for (I may have to post a pic when I get it)... simple happiness.
I hope there was something that gave other people simple happiness somewhere else in the world today too.
n to all
dreadlockssite celebrates its 3 year birthday today aug 9th
so i wanted to share a lil of the history and landmarks we've encountered along the way.
First off the humble beginnings. I was on a site called hipforums that got less and less hip all the time, it got downright ugly in fact. so i stayed in the dread forum only and avoided the other 400 forums, but even that was full of sarcastic replies troll like behavior and silly arguments and abusive behavior. I then along with slang came up with the concept for dreadlocktruth and i made tge 1st donation to get that started however after trying to join many times but having trouble i gave up.
after awhile i got sick of hipforums so found a new site dreadlocksforums but there were hardly anyone there, 8 out of every 10 that tried to join couldnt, and the admin who started it spent 5 minutes on the site the 1st day then vanished for over a year.
o after posting the original version of dreaducation there we held a meeting of all the active members and decided to hold a mutiny of sorts and recreate tge site here, or to be more precice create a better version that people could join, had an active admin and would provide only the best info we could.
early on we were a group of maybe 100 that moved from that site to here. but a comment on dreadheadhqs myspace page about the evils of wax soon changed that as a couple hundred former dreadheadhq customers flocked to us.
by the time we reached 800 members or so the sitemap had grown from roughly 2000 pages to 50,000 and i remember thinking (and posting) that we were officialy a large site at that time
who would have guesed that in the next 2 1/2 years we'd reach 1,118,695 yea over a milion pages (that was last nights sitemap update total)
since then we held a debate with jonny clean which he failed miserably to defend his products, even using his incredible powers of nonsense confusion and lies. he then came back to us a month later admitting that wax doesnt wash out of dreads, and that when waxed no new knots form after day 1!
we pushed him into promising a free wax remover to anyone who used hi wax (ofcourse hi ax removers c[-very expensive, not proven to be effective, and harsh chemicals. he also has a long lit of requirements in order to get it free, so much so that every wax victim has just opted to buy the all natural wax b gone instead.
during year 2 we expanded alot, adding the dreadlocks dating site, as well as offering fre shops to members who are crafty or creative.
this lead to creation of a dread wax remover made by a couple members who were originaly dreadheadhq "sponsored" members (they now say dreadheadhq supporters are very cult like and the "sponsored" meant they were never alowed to tell the truth about the products.
unfortunately due to life issues they discontinur]=ed the wax removal soaps, byt along came a new member who makes awesome dread soaos who developed a new wax rejkmover thats even more effective.
We've saved thousands of dreads along the way, from wax, crochet, twisting causing baldness, and much more. over a million dreadheads have visited the site, and hundreds of thousands (at a gurss) use it regularly as their ony reliable source of dreadlocks info.
in the past year weve witnesed the top dread sites fall from grace, as dreadlocks.com wich has held the number 1 position in google has 1/100th the trafic we have, and almost 100% that viit read only 1 page then leave in disgust. the other "big names" dreadheadhq and knottyboy now combined get 1/5th the traffic we get thats both sites combined.
in the past year 1/2 we've seen a reduction in wax use, where it used to be 1 out of every 3 that joined had used wax, now its closer to 1 in 20!
unfortunately thanks to youtube though crochet use has gone way up as wax use went down.
thanks to all the wonderful members and their dedication to this site we have earned a reputatiion thats lead to almost 1/2 our search r=traffic searching fir info on our site specificly like 1/3 traffic is just searching dreadlockssite and alt more searching stuff like best shampoo for dreads dreadlockssite or loose roots dreadlockssite proving that they feel we are the authority and most reliable source of info.
ofcourse we hac some try ti give us a bad reputatuon toosaying we werent accepting because we wouldnt recomend harmful methods. especialy those who proffitted from the harmful methods.
but then there were others in the industry that recognized the value of the info we provided and many reformed their businesses
one worth mentioning ragingrootsstudios formerly the dreadqueen refuses to provide services like interlocking or wax use instead provides a list of less then ethical locticians willing to do them.
we as a community have had a profound effect on dreadlocks worldwide
and this is just the beginnibg, just 3 years in by the time we reach 10 years i'm certain we will be blown away by how far we've come.
today, on our 3rd birthday as a community i want wach and every 1 of you to turn on the facebook autoshare thing (floating over there on the left)
and share as much of the sites content as you can for the day and lets see if we can't kick off the 4th year with a bang, and double the number we reach for the day.
namaste