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1:16am July 27, 2015

Was trying to get more hair pictures now that my hair is fully dried (and super shiny), but Fey had other ideas, still does (she’s blocking my view of the screen even now).

Argh, I tried to tag this #elderly cats and somehow got #elderly citizens.  It seems like tumblr is autocorrecting a lot of my tags in messed up ways lately.

4:13pm July 26, 2015

So I finally had a chance to do something I’ve been meaning to do all summer – an oil treatment on my hair.  (Don’t worry, I never do hot oil treatments and I only shampoo my hair at all, if I’m doing an oil treatment and need to get some of the oil out of my hair after.  So basically all I put into my hair generally is very occasional oil, and then the mildest shampoo that will still rinse the oil out enough for my hair to dry properly.)

My mom had sent me what she called a “conditioner”, but it’s actually just nearly every kind of hair oil imaginable, combined into one bottle.  There’s no other ingredients but various plant oils and possibly shea butter.  So I decided to try it out.  (Normally I wet my hair, put on coconut oil, rinse it out, put in olive oil, rinse that out, and shampoo if necessary.  And I also have a spray I’ve made out of coconut oil and olive oil and water that’s much milder and helps moisturize my hair in between oil treatments.)

So I used the multi-oil-thing, and then I left it on for a few hours, and then I shampooed my hair with the mildest shampoo I have, which is SheaMoisture Coconut & Hibiscus Curl & Shine Shampoo.  And this is the end result so far – long, soft, shiny, wavy/curly hair that’s much less frizzy than it started out,  It’s no longer trying to stand on end sideways, either.

12:15am March 30, 2014

This is a better lit set of pictures of my hair, fully dried, after a coconut oil treatment. This is how wavy my hair is naturally, before I mess it up by brushing it, or letting it get too dry, or things like that. I wish it was this wavy and soft and shiny all the time.

10:26pm March 29, 2014

My hair right after it’s gotten mostly dry from a coconut oil treatment.  Took almost 24 hours from when I first put in the oil to when it dried (with a lot of washing and waiting in between), but it worked, I think.

What I did:

  • Brushed a bit of water through my hair
  • Brushed coconut oil through my hair
  • Waited a long time
  • Tried unsuccessfully to wash the coconut oil out with a mild shampoo
  • Waited a long time, and my hair wouldn’t totally dry
  • Washed the coconut oil out with a stronger shampoo
  • Washed again with the milder shampoo, because it had moisturizing ingredients in it
  • Conditioned
  • After everything was rinsed out and my hair was still wet, sprayed a light mixture of water, olive oil, and coconut oil onto my hair (just enough to help lock in the moisture)
  • Let it dry

And it’s darker, shinier, wavier, and softer than it was before :-)

3:41am January 18, 2014
I swear my hair gets darker every time I deep-moisturize it, and lighter as it gets dryer.  But here it is now, just after drying from the coconut oil/olive oil blend followed by the SheaMoisture coconut and hibiscus shampoo.  Luckily I did not have to use any stronger shampoo than that, even on the front parts of my hair that hold onto oil harder than others My hair is shiny and soft, both of which are amazing given that it’s coarse and normally dull. And I think it’s softer than it was with the olive oil alone.  The coconut oil makes a difference, and maybe so does the change in shampoo.  (Last time I used a much harsher shampoo I borrowed from a neighbor.  This time, I had a harsher clarifying shampoo on hand just in case, but I never needed to use it.) (Fell asleep before I could post this last night.)

I swear my hair gets darker every time I deep-moisturize it, and lighter as it gets dryer.  But here it is now, just after drying from the coconut oil/olive oil blend followed by the SheaMoisture coconut and hibiscus shampoo.  Luckily I did not have to use any stronger shampoo than that, even on the front parts of my hair that hold onto oil harder than others

My hair is shiny and soft, both of which are amazing given that it’s coarse and normally dull. And I think it’s softer than it was with the olive oil alone.  The coconut oil makes a difference, and maybe so does the change in shampoo.  (Last time I used a much harsher shampoo I borrowed from a neighbor.  This time, I had a harsher clarifying shampoo on hand just in case, but I never needed to use it.)

(Fell asleep before I could post this last night.)

4:16pm January 17, 2014

Okay washed the oil out, I hope.

With Sheamoisture’s Coconut and Hibiscus shampoo.

Hopefully that did the trick, because I don’t want to have to use anything stronger, although I have something stronger on hand just in case.  And this smells better than the stronger stuff.

We’ll see what happens.  I’ve never mixed olive and coconut oil before, or used coconut oil at all.  My hair smells really good, but it’s still a question of how it turns out when it dries.

3:42pm January 17, 2014
Trying coconut oil combined with olive oil this time.  And much less than the amount of olive oil I used last time, which proved almost impossible to wash out.  Although I still probably used too much, it’s hard to judge especially with long hair.  I tried to concentrate heavily on the under layers of my hair, which are always the driest.  We’ll see what happens. I spilled some of the oil on the floor, and rather than wasting it I basically stuck my hair on the floor and rubbed it through it.  The dirt will wash out when I wash the oil out. The new brush I got helped a lot, the old one didn’t really get the oil all the way through my hair.  (Weird, since the old brush was more bristly than the newer one.  But the newer one had longer bristles, which probably helped.) If I want to grow my hair I have to know how to keep it healthy instead of dry and brittle.  :-/

Trying coconut oil combined with olive oil this time.  And much less than the amount of olive oil I used last time, which proved almost impossible to wash out.  Although I still probably used too much, it’s hard to judge especially with long hair.  I tried to concentrate heavily on the under layers of my hair, which are always the driest.  We’ll see what happens.

I spilled some of the oil on the floor, and rather than wasting it I basically stuck my hair on the floor and rubbed it through it.  The dirt will wash out when I wash the oil out.

The new brush I got helped a lot, the old one didn’t really get the oil all the way through my hair.  (Weird, since the old brush was more bristly than the newer one.  But the newer one had longer bristles, which probably helped.)

If I want to grow my hair I have to know how to keep it healthy instead of dry and brittle.  :-/

1:07pm December 28, 2013
This has been an extremely difficult task, namely washing enough olive oil out of my hair that it wasn’t wet and greasy. But it seems to be worth the result when it’s done: My hair, which is normally quite dull, is shiny and the frizz has been cut down a good deal. And the texture is really nice. Even though I used a fairly nasty shampoo on it to cut the oil down, it feels silky and smooth, despite being pretty coarse normally. Easier to detangle than it ever is. The underlayers (invisible in the picture) are retaining their wavy texture nicely. I really like this, even though I had to rinse it twice and wash it three times to finally get enough oil out for it to be able to dry. So I’m very happy with it. I normally don’t do all this bother for my hair, but when it came out of the snood after five months it was feeling and looking rather messed up, oily on the top and dry on the bottom and frizzy all over, so I thought it warranted some amount of work.

This has been an extremely difficult task, namely washing enough olive oil out of my hair that it wasn’t wet and greasy. But it seems to be worth the result when it’s done: My hair, which is normally quite dull, is shiny and the frizz has been cut down a good deal. And the texture is really nice. Even though I used a fairly nasty shampoo on it to cut the oil down, it feels silky and smooth, despite being pretty coarse normally. Easier to detangle than it ever is. The underlayers (invisible in the picture) are retaining their wavy texture nicely. I really like this, even though I had to rinse it twice and wash it three times to finally get enough oil out for it to be able to dry. So I’m very happy with it. I normally don’t do all this bother for my hair, but when it came out of the snood after five months it was feeling and looking rather messed up, oily on the top and dry on the bottom and frizzy all over, so I thought it warranted some amount of work.

5:05am December 26, 2013

Also the natural oils in my hair…

…seem to work really well on my wand.

I washed the dye out of it the other day – it looks much nicer its own natural color, rather than artificially darkened – and it got really really dried out.  So I’ve been using tiny bits of lemon oil and amla oil to get it oily and happy again.  And I’d read that even the natural oil from your hands is good for it, so now I’m getting oil from my hair and rubbing it on it and that seems to work really well too.

The amla oil, by the way, really brings out the beautiful colors in the wood.  I thought it might because it does the same thing for dark hair, and this is very dark wood.  And the wood seems to absolutely love it, and it becomes really beautiful.  I’ve never heard of someone using amla oil on wood before, but I know you can use lots of different kinds of oils on wood, so I tried it.

And the combination of the lemon oil, amla oil, hand oil, and hair oil seem to be getting it back to its healthier state than after it got waterlogged and then dried out by the water.