Hello all. I was happy to find this site and be able to read through these discussions. I wish that I would have found it several years ago when I dreaded the 1st time. I dreaded my hair using a kit from dreadhead HQ the first time I dreaded. And it was A LOT of work. (waxing and all that) But I am an instruction following kind of person so it was super comforting having some directions to follow. Plus it helped me feel better about all the people in my life freaking out about my dreading knowing that I had some "professionals" telling me how to do it. however I was messing with them all the time....since I had to follow their maintenance schedule and I HATED the sticking nasty black waxy crap I would get on my hands whenever I rolled them. It was a lot to do and to carry around with me. I had those dreads for a little over a year. I combed them out. It took me a few weeks as I could only do 1-2 dreads per night. I noticed that I was just combing out a lot of wax....some sections of my hair weren't knotted at all it was just matted waxy mushed up hair. (also the wax made everything stick to my dreads so I combed out a lot of blanket fuzz as well)
Anyway this time around I did back comb them in again. But this time I did them all myself, as last time I had friends do it and it hurt. Since I did it myself..it really wasn't that bad. (i would NOT compare backcombing to childbirth on ANY LEVEL.. 
) I haven't really been doing anything to them but washing them. Oddly enough I thought that I was kind of screwing them up by not messing with the roots or the tips. I will say that I have a lot more loose hairs this time and they are a little flatter in places and fuzzier...but mostly because i really don't mess with them at all.
I did have a smell issue...because I wasn't getting them all the way dry. So I did do a baking soda, tea tree, sea salt soak. I left it on for 15 min probably but it started to burn (i might have added too much tea tree??) Anyway, I rinsed it out and my scalp was really clean!! But later that night my hair felt all waxy and sticky. So the next day I soaked in vinegar...and that took the sticky feeling away. And there is no smell when they are wet anymore! (I am thinking the waxy stuff might have come from a camping trip where my husband packed my wool wash bar of soap instead of my dread bar of soap...so I accidentally washed with lanolin 
...it is all natural but pretty waxy!)
Well that is my dread life in a nutshell. I would like to care more for them in general. Put some beads in or wrap them or something. Because sometimes I do feel trapped in my hair do...like when you only wear your hair in a pony tail everything...that kind of trapped. Which can be fixed if I would give them some love.
updated by @charity: 01/13/15 09:10:47PM
