Thanks Miata for your input.

Yes, I am on my way. I have visited a loctician and she said that she can easily palm roll my hair. BUT, that is all she does.

I am wondering if latching would provide better results for me.

My twist/locs are smaller than a pencil. I did not worry about parts, which is cool. Everyone thinks that my twists are beautiful this small. Who knew?

So, I am still looking for my best maintenance routine.

Thanks for your input.

Your hair does look great btw.



OK, this is late and it looks like you're already moving forward with your journey, but I was snooping round for tips on coloring and found your question. (At 30, I finally have more random strands of gray hairs than I'm willing to yank out, but not nearly enough to pretend I'm some kinda silver fox. Ha.) Thought it'd be worth archiving more viewpoints.

In any case, I started my locs as two-strand twists around Oct. 07, I think. I say "I think," because locing wasn't something I planned, I just sorta fell into it. Don't remember exactly what set of twists were the loc twists, as I was sorta bouncing between twists and puffs those days. At that point, I'd been natural for about 6 years, and locs were the final frontier, so I must've been ready for 'em on some level. Anywho, to answer your questions...

1) My twists were definitely done wet. I rarely dry twisted, and I was not in a dry-twist phase. That, I do remember.

2) I wouldn't straighten out hair before locking. It sounds like a recipe for a) locs that don't want'a lock, B) baby locks that snap and go bye-bye, or c) both. Call me biased, but I can't think of any disadvantages to wet-twisting for locs. From an aesthetic viewpoint, they won't show as much length right off the bat as will blow-dried locs. But at that stage of the game, the look of your twists shouldn't matter - it's the locs you're after. I'd be more interested in twists that are strong and set the stage for lovely locs.

3) Maintenance? I wouldn't go smaller than pencil width. It'll be a bugger to maintain anything smaller than that. Forget neatness, just keeping them all from hugging and joining once they're mature (provided you're not intentionally pursuing a sort of freeform look) is a kind of punishment in itself . And go too small, and they might wanta break, or worse, rip loose from the follicle. I used to have some tiny locs round my hairline... Took care of that silliness. I'm all better now.

And shame on me, but uh, I do almost ZERO maintenance, as far as palm-rolling or latching or anything like that goes. Once, months ago, actually in 2008, I did a tool-less version of what would be latch-hook on my crown, and I'll be tidying up the crown again (very light palm rolling - yes I'm mixing it up...) for an event, but otherwise I don't maintain.

3) And my parts? Ha, I never took the time to organize them into neat, little matrices back when I was just twistin for twistin's sake ... and such are the state of my locs. And they're fine. I wash about once every 2 weeks, sometimes once a week, and I have hand-in-head disease where I absentmindedly coil loose hairs around loced strands almost once an hour. Every hour. Every day. Of my life. I think that's what keeps my head in check.

Here are some pics of my locs. Not intended to be hair photos, but you get the idea.






I should note that late last year, I took a pair of scissors and wound up giving myself a hair cut. I wanted the back to be shorter and tapered and the front dramatically longer, but with piece-y, long, asymmetrical bangs. Buh-lieve me, in my mind, I knew EXACTLY what I was going for. Was only moderately successful at executing. I'm enlisting the aid of a pro to get it right after I get more length, but I'm kind of enjoying the whatever-it-is cut I got now. (And that's another thing, you can cut mature 2-strand twist locs with no problem/unraveling - at least I could).

Oh, and I wished I would have stayed 100% product free that first year. I used some oils and natural aloe vera gels and such, not on any kind of regular basis, but looking back, I would have preferred to keep my young locks from making friends with and hanging on to some of that crap. It's normal for locs to collect some fuzz and dust from the environment. Adding excessive product to that situation just mucks things up.

And of course, everyone's idea about "excessive," is going to vary and come down to personal opinion.
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Star13:

I followed Cheleski's advice and did not use conditioner or oil. just aloe. I do put some oil on in the mornings to . sheen it up. I have used the botanic oil forever and love it.

I am just looking for a retightening method. I have never liked a lot of product in my hair and the retwisting via palm roll seems antithetical to that philosophy.

The problem is that most people don't latch in the area, I would have to go into DC, which is a two hour drive. yikes.

Not quite ready to diy. I might move to that eventually, but I'd like to see it/feel it done first.

Thanks for the update.


Ya know , I never read this response well enough. I understand what you are saying. I don't/didn't use oil very frequently, I've used it a few times since this month, probably not enough to make a real difference. At this point I'm just saving the bottle until later, because I don't really need it now.
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