Hello, folks of the dready internet. I've been off the comb for just over a month now. Been taking pictures of my progress at about weekly intervals. I must admit it has been a fun, exciting, and rewarding process for me so far. I honestly didn't expect to see so many changes in my hair in a month's time.
Here is me after one day of no combing, before my first shower of my nappy no-comb natties.
Later that same day, after showering. I was using Dr. Bronner's tea tree liquid soap diluted 1:12 with water in the initial weeks.
4 days in. I'm excited about every little change! LOL
Day 6 even... I'm also paying too much attention to my hair at this point. It was at this point that I started to suspect that the Bronner's soap I was using was not rinsing out with my water.
2 weeks. I finally switched from Bronner's to the baking soda and acv rinse. A lot of the "progress" that I had seen with the Bronner's came out very quickly, I suspect due to residue build up from that soap. My hair does not feel tacky to the touch anymore.
3 weeks. At this point, after numerous goes at the baking soda and apple cider vinegar rinse, my scalp was in rebellion: dandruff, itchy, bumps, sore, ugh. I finally gave in and decided to use Vicki's Just 4 Dreads soap from now on. This was a good choice!
I had also put on about 12 small wooden beads in the previous week. By this point there were still a few left, but most of them had just fallen out.
Here's an example of the sectioning going at 3.5 weeks. This is just shortly after washing.
1 month. Wow, time flies. At this point, I am simultaneously less worried about what my hair is doing as well as fascinated with the amount of change that's taken place in this seemingly short amount of time. I notice that the most visible progress or change is noticeable some days after washing, and then with each washing the progress seems to come undone briefly, but then changes more noticeably before the next wash etc. etc.
At this point there's not any noticeable knots or looping, but my sections continue to become more distinct. Some of the roots of my sections were getting very friendly with each other, and I found myself pulling a couple awkwardly attached sections apart.
Here's before doing a lil separating
And here's after
This is an example of the sections that are going on all over my head. No noticeable knots, just hangin out.
2 months 10 days! Hello all, here's an update at last. I've been through a number of things since my last update that may or may not have anything to do with where my hair is now. I did a 10-day meditation retreat and have gone camping and have been generally enjoying a lazy sunny summer. Overall, I would say there's not much visible difference between this update and the last. Even knots that I can feel one day might disappear the next. Things seem very impermanent and in flux at this point.
When I was gone for the retreat, I decided to use one of the shampoo bars I got from dreadlockshampoo.com so that I had something for hair and body in one bar. For various reasons, I developed a significant residue problem after the very first time of using it and continued to have this problem during the whole time I used it. After three weeks of using the bar, I switched back to the liquid soap from the same website. The residue has decreased quite a lot since then, but I'm still dealing with some stickiness, though not nearly as bad as while using the bar.
Well, folks, there it is. I suppose I'll see ya around the three month mark. Be patient and persistent, and you are bound to be successful.
updated by @cody-harder: 02/14/15 06:07:49AM
