Hmmmm, thanks for the thoughts SE. My dreads are treated very naturally now, I try not to do anything other than wash them now. I really regret TnRing them now.....I should have just let them go on their own from the beginning. I will just wait and see how I feel after a while. Thanks for your input!
Hello everyone.
I have been thinking about my dreads recently, and been trying to make a decision regarding their fate. My dreads are around 5 months old now (all different ages actually), and some have established themselves quite nicely. I formed all of my dreads myself, with the twist and rip method. I like my dreads and I hate the idea of cutting them off, However.....After viewing lots of pictures and entries regarding completely naturally formed dreads....I have come to have some regrets. When I first made my dreads I was under the impression that I should have perfect, neat dreads....Doing them myself has not produced dreads like this at all...HOWEVER it HAS helped me to understand the true beauty of imperfect, naturally formed dreads. I now LOVE the idea of my dreads all being different and unique. They are different and unique as they are now....but I forced that.....Now I want NATURAL dreads. So....my dilemma.......I want to grow natural dreads now......I want to start fresh and get to watch them develop......I DO NOT however, want to cut my hair off and have to wait for it to grow. So......what are my options? I could just bite the bullet and cut them off.....But then I would have to wait quite some time for my hair to be long enough to try again. The option which I find more attractive is combing my dreads out.....but I am worried that I will lose a lot of hair and have thin, sparse , damaged hair at the end of the combing process. So.....I really don't know what to do......Any thoughts, suggestions, or opinions would be GREATLY appreciated.
Thankyou all very much.
Hey everyone. I know that the whole idea here is to leave dreads alone and not fuss about them, but I am a bit worried. I am camping at the moment and just a while ago, I was screwing around in my tent when I stood up a bit and got a dread kind of tangled in something, Im not sure whether it was a zip, or velcro, I tried to get it out gently but it ended up ripping it quite badly, It seems to have somehow ripped up the middle of one of my dreads, from the root, to about a third of the way up the dread, so now that area is open and loose, I can easily fit 2 fingers inside the hole it has created. So, do I just leave it alone and hope that it will fix itself, how long might that take? or is there something else I can do?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks heaps.
@Cinderelly, Yeah, I know that they are all going to be different. Thats part of the reason why I convinced myself not to get my dreads done at a salon, because I want a bit of individuality. I am excited about them being different! Thanks.
Thanks for the tips Soaring Eagle. Im still trying to decide how I want to wash my dreads. whether I use baking soda, residue free shampoo etc etc. I am a bit afraid of baking soda though because I have reasonably sensitive skin, its pretty prone to burning, drying out etc, so if I did accidentally get some on my scalp, it could turn nasty. I will probably end up using some sort of teetree shampoo or something I think.
Thanks again for the great replies people!
Yeah, I am probably worrying too much haha. I will try not to in the future!
Thanks for the tips. it sounds like what I plan to do could work pretty well.
Any Soaring Eagle, I think you might be right, I was running my fingers through my hair a lot. I will make a point of not doing that when I wash it now. My hair is about shoulder length.
Yeah, I guess if I section it fairly randomly it will sort itself out and look less manufactured.
Thanks heaps guys.
Hello wonderful people.
I have a few questions to ask you guys.
Before I ask my questions though, I want to make a couple of things clear.
Firstly, I know that I might seem a bit silly posting here when I am not doing my dreads completely naturally, however, after spending some time lurking around the site, I am confident that you are an open minded enough bunch to realize and accept that I have chosen to do things slightly differently than how you might.
Secondly, I actually would like to do natural dreads in many ways, but I am doubtful that they would ever actually happen, I have done what seem to be the 'rules' of natural dreads, 'wash and don't brush' for quite a few years now, in fact, at 18 years of age, I can't remember the last time I brushed, my hair. I was probably very young. Despite this, I have had no natural knotting or dreading occur AT ALL, and I have been growing my hair out for probably around 7 months now.
Due to this, I have chosen to do my dreads via a method that might be seen as, semi or partially natural. Basically, I am helping my hair start dreading, with very gentle backcombing and some twist and rip, emphasis goes on very gentle, I am really making sure I do as little as possible damage to my hair. After I have formed these baby dreads, I will leave them alone, Im not going to crochet them, put product in them, palm roll them, wax them or put bands on them. I am very comfortable with the idea of waiting months for my dreads to establish themselves their own way. I am more than happy to give my dreads all the time they need to sort themselves out. I just want to give them a bit of a helping start to life, thats all.
I do have some questions though.
Firstly, I have decided to......give birth to my dreads....I guess.....over a period of weeks, possibly months. What I mean by this is that I will add a dread here and there, as well as asking people who mean something to me to start off a dread for me. So my head will be partially dreaded for potentially quite some time. This means that 1. I will have loose hair next to dreads and 2. I will have dreads at different stages in their development near each other. So, what I want to ask is, will this be an issue? Will my already formed dreads eat up too much hair from around them? and will there be any conflicts between newer and older dreads?
When I first decided to one day get dreads (about 6 years ago I think) I was hellbent on the idea of having pristine, straight round uniformly sized tight dreads. Over the time building up to actually doing the deed however, my views have changed rapidly. I went from believing that I would pay $600 odd to get my dreads done professionally, to believing that I would do my dreads myself, making them very neat, all on the same day, to deciding to do them over a period of time...and finally deciding that I am happy to do them very slowly with little to no input after they are started off. These changes in views took place over probably about the last month. Although, I have finally loosened up and decided that perfect neat straight dreads really aren't that special, I do still want to achieve reasonable sectioning. When I say this, I don't mean I want perfect squares lined up, or criss crossed or anything, but I do want my dreads to fill my head, without empty patches or too much loose hair for my dreads to suck up in the future.
This brings forward another question that I hope someone can answer for me. Is it possible to achieve decent sectioning, without sitting down and sectioning my head all in one go? So, if I add a few here and there, is it still going to be possible to get reasonable good coverage?
I am sorry for such a huge post, but I just have so much that I want to explain and ask that I haven;t really been anle to get decent answers for before now.
Thankyou all very much for reading!
Hello everyone.
I have wanted to get dreads for probably about 6 years now, but the school I went to had a rule that boys could not have hair past their collar length, and they weren't going to let me have short dreadlocks either.
Now I have graduated, I have been able to grow my hair to around shoulder length, and have decided to jump in and start dreading. So far I have 4 dreads, 2 thin ones and 2 that are a bit thicker. I have done them using gentle back combing and careful twist and rip. I know you guys are very much into the neglect method, but it just can't work for me unfortunately. But I assure you all, I am being as careful not to break or damage hair as I can.
Can't wait to learn heaps of awesome dready info from you bunch!
I don;t really think it would matter hey. I really don't know where u would get the best ones. Maybe you could Knit or crochet your own! Makes it more personal and unique thats for sure.
Have a good one.
