its extremely harmful and most people hate extensions cause they feel so fake and like dead weight..no real connection to them
dreads grow..they extend themselves over time
i started with very short hair too
now they are 7-10 feet long dragging on the ground
with dreads you will really regret taking shortcuts especially if you do indeed want 'real dreads'
theres several ways to do extensions almost all brutally harmful.. felting is the worse thing you can do to dreads.. every hair the felting needlye touches is shredded to peices.. they are extremely weak with the average hair length being under 1/4 inch just held together by the shreaded tattered edges.
crochet.. slightly less harmful but still brutal
instead of shreading every hair into tiny peices you break dozens of hairs at a time then usually do it over and over.. with crochet it might take 50 or more times before every hairs average length is under an inch..and takes a whole lot of crochetting to get the extreme weakness that felting causes
now i dont generally recommend extensions with just one exceptions
1 your using a loved ones hair, either when its cut or lost to cancer.when the hair comes from someone yyou know and care about..not a random stranger and not synthetic.. but instead carries a meaning to you.. in this case you simply have some loose hair at the ends to merge (your baby dreads should be well established so several months in already) then wrap the joint tight with hemp for anywhere from a week to a couple months and it will just dread together without any harm
now when you say you want real dreads.. you should be aware they don't happen overnight ..they take time just as the growth takes time
taking biotin daily will speed up the growth
theres only 1 starter method we recomend cause its low to no harm.. tnr aka twist and rip
but most prefer the natural method..simply let it dread as it grows
this will have the most profound meaning to you.. the experience of growth is more then your hair but inner growth a well
your dreads will mean so much to you that extensions will feel like corruption ..unless they had just as much meaning (like a sibling who diesd of cancer who you carry with you in your hair)
in cases like that the extensions can have as much or more meaning as your own dreads.
really think this through
if your ready for real dreads your ready t grow with them to commit to them ad to grow and treat them right.
dont rush length length will come
when your picking them up to get them out of the way to use the bathroom you will feel silly for ever even thinking of extending them so early on before they even had a chance to form
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My new book Ban The Taboo Vol 1