OK so here’s the deal. After much trial and error, I think I have my winter regimen down. I haven’t done a hair post in awhile, so I’ll catch you up on what’s been going on.
Since the cooler weather has kicked in, my hair has been dry, dry, dry despite my most earnest efforts to deep condition and moisturize. My braid outs have suffered from several ailments due to lack of moisture, the wrong kind of moisture and over moisture. My hair seems to really miss the natural moisture in the air in the summertime, and I can’t find it bottled anywhere! ;-)
I discovered that my hair gets dry and hard when I use protein, so I’m going to be very wary of products with protein in it going forward. I’ve been bunning it for several weeks simply because everything I was trying wasn’t working. I tried to do a roller set, but my roots are way too poofy when it dries and my hair would look like a big helmet on my head and end up in a bun.
Since I was feeling so frustrated, I decided to slow down and get back to basics. Although I’m newly natural, I knew how to achieve healthy, thriving winter hair when it was relaxed so there’s no reason that I shouldn’t be able to do it now. I remembered reading on Curly Nikki that the reason curly hair is dryer than straight hair is something about how the moisture is more evenly distributed on a strand of straight hair because there are no hills and valleys for the moisture to have to travel through. When I thought about the history of my hair, I have usually had the most noticeable growth spurts in the winter. Perhaps my winter hair just prefers to be straightened out. This was my theory, so I decided to go ahead and test it out.
I pretreated my hair the evening before washing with EEOO from root to tip. I wrapped my hair in siran wrap and a silk scarf and went to sleep. In the morning I washed with Organix coconut cream shampoo (sulfate-free) and conditioned with HH essences herbal hydration. (I LOVE the Organix coconut oil conditioner but it was all gone). I got out of the shower and with a squirt bottle applied a healthy amount of coconut oil to my roots and the length of my hair, then applied an even healthier amount of cholesterol to my roots and the length of my hair. I put on a plastic cap and got under the dryer for 30ish minutes.
I rinsed this out for a long time under lukewarm water. My hair felt so soft and I was really excited to see how it would straighten out. I sprayed Elasta QP H2 (which is a thermal protectant and styling spray) all over my hair and section by section starting in the back I blow dried my hair on high on the warm setting. I didn’t have to add anything else because my hair was so moisturized from the oil treatments. When I was done, I went over it randomly with the instyler just a bit because I didn’t want my hair bone straight. I knew that when I went outside my hair would poof every so slightly just the way I like it.
The first night I just bunned it to help my roots and edges lay down and also to just let the moisture marinate. I went to the hair cuttery and got a dry trim because my ends were looking pretty rough. My hair got snowed on and got kind of a Diana ross look that looked kinda messy but I loved it. For the pics below, I did a dry set where I just put shea butter on my roots and ends and put my hair in four braids with rollers at the ends. My hair still feels really moisturized so I went easy on the shea butter.
I really like the big, soft, effortless look that I got from this and I think this will be a staple style through the winter. It doesn't matter to me that the braids didn't leave any wave definition, because I know that in orderMy hair feels so moisturized. It’s easy to maintain by just throwing it in some cornrows at night. I will only be putting heat (warm not hot) in it once or twice a month. Occasionally, I will curl it after blowdrying and maintain with pin curls. We’ll see how this works. I also plan to wear buns, pin-ups or ponytails on days when I wear wool sweaters and coats to protect my ends.
We’ll see how this goes ;-)
