SO...I've been having a minor conflict for the past little while. I'm not sure if I want to continue my natural set, or if I want to comb out the current progress and TnR them or have them backcombed. I've heard how damaging backcombing can be, so I'm not sure about going with that method, but my hair is just being so difficult I'm not sure what else to do. I do have a couple of dreads that have been coming together really well, but the majority are forming up funny...just becoming massive balls that climb up my head and I don't want literal hair balls all over the place. So, I'm not sure what to do just yet...I would love a few opinions though.
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Ok, I haven't updated this thing in over a month...oops. My separation problem was temporarily solved by loosely wrapping some of the developing dreads with yarn for about a week until the surrounding ones locked up a little bit more. Result: Wrapped dreads are tighter, and there are less masses of loose hairs to congo. So, I am pretty satisfied with that. I will say that when I mean that I wrapped them loosely, I mean that I had to push the top of the yarn back up multiple times a day, and the dreads were not being squeezed, so there's no pinched spots in my dreads.
Separating is definitely getting easier...I still have to separate daily, but it's gotten SOOO much better from where it was a month ago.
So, as for pictures...my phone camera sucks and I'm pretty sure that my hair is impossible to photograph with it. Try as I may, I just cannot get a good picture of what's going on with my dreads, but I've put up the best I could manage for now. These pictures are from today...so almost 7 weeks now, and unfortunately, they make it look like I've got some serious issues going on with loose hair joining with dreads at all angles...I just didn't separate again before taking the pictures, but I did separate my hair this afternoon, so you'll see how quick it undoes my organizing lol
Alright, just a really quick update, but I'll put up pictures today or tomorrow. I've discovered the way to keep this nightmare separated! I experimented on half of my head first and the results have been pretty good 
I bought the dread locking gel from dreadlockshampoo.com and pinned half of my hair at the back of my head away from the rest and then just kept the locks secured with one large hair band just loosely tied around them. Start at the top layers of hair and sort of work your way back as if you're making multiple rows...mine aren't straight, but it helped me keep track of where all of my dreads were forming. With each naturally forming section, you get it out of the congo it's started forming over the past few hours and take the loose hairs that have been catching the other sections at the root and wrap them around the main section. You are not twisting and ripping, just showing your hair where it's home is! Get some gel and put it along the entire section, root to tip. (I used a lot because my hair is so long) Then you just flip that section over to the other side of your head, pin it if necessary, and move on. The whole process on just one side of my head took .... 2 and a half hours?? But I have got a TON of hair!
After 2 days, most of those sections are still there and I can find them and manage other loose hairs pretty easily. Which is pretty damn impressive compared to how hard it was to section before. I'll put up pictures as soon as I can...happy dreading! --
Ok, so now we're a couple weeks shy of 2 weeks and I've definitely had some progress...some of it was undone throughout the week however, due to knots knotting too quickly...but I'm working on that.
I started naturally dreading one week ago as of tomorrow morning. My hair has never stayed tangle free in all my life, so I guess letting it go has caused my hair to throw a party. It started out with only the underside of my hair forming a massive knotted mess, and it has sectioned off and spread out into the topside of my hair at warp speed, no joke. I was expecting to have a little progress and some awesome locks at about two months or so, just based on what I'd read and seen on here, so I was not prepared for what my hair has done.
I have to section my hair at least twice a day, more is better though, or I start finding congos forming in it. I've actually got a few locks in there that look like dreads now, crazy. I think it is interesting, because while I am very excited that my hair is all for the idea of dreads, it has made it difficult to keep my dreads small. I intend to have dreads bigger than I am sectioning right now, but I figured that if I start them smaller than I want, I will have less of a chance of having massive locks sneaking up on me between separating, and I can let them join with other small dreads when they stop being this greedy.
That is where I was at the end of the first day, and here is where I am now...
updated by @rebekah-shupe: 02/14/15 04:43:06AM
