Twist Results: Enter Yasei

Last night after putting my freshly washed hair in twists I pinned them taut to stretch them, the result was supposed to be a kind of defined afro with stretched out clumps of curls and kinks, but after I took them out, I got this:

This is the kinda ish I don’t like

Which is a lot more than I bargained for, in Naptural85’s video she didn’t add any additional moisturisers or styling creams, and I thought that was a bit odd, but I rolled with it. The back section came out a bit like hers but with looser definition, which is strange because even though the back part is looser than the rest of my hair, it’s still probably tighter than hers. Which leads me to the conclusion that :

1. I probably didn’t stretch the twists enough.
2. Maybe the twists were too tight.
3. I need to give more moisture/styling aid to the tighter curls of my head.
4. My hair is very prone to frizz.
5. I need to find a product to tame said frizz.

So I tried to tame the wildebeest that had just appeared on my head by adding a cute headband:

But it just got swallowed up by my hair, because the band was so thin. At my wits end I realised I had no choice  ‘when in doubt, puff it out’ a wise woman once told me (although i’m pretty sure i just made that up myself) I found an old stretched hairband and put my hair into a trusty puff:

It turned out well this time, but i’m going to have to find other ways of saving failed hairstyles. Better yet, I could just master the hairstyles themselves and then I wouldn’t need to save them. Since today’s hairstyle didn’t go well, i’m just going to try the flat twist and bantu knot out I was planning to do before this, at any rate, at least my hair is stretched, styles always come out nicer this way :D. Today’s hair had nothing to do with any kind of rest, and so I have another name for her, Yasei( ) the Japanese word for wild (can you tell i’m learning Japanese?).

Flast twist results coming your way tomorrow 😀

Simi

X

Box braid takedown: Enter Yasumi

It’s been almost 8 full weeks since I got these waist length box braids installed. At about 5 weeks, which is a lot later than usual, I started to get a bit itchy about letting my hair free and being able to touch and play with it again. But that happened to be right near the end of my exams, I had reached the home stretch and I couldn’t imagine spending valuable time doing my hair when I had a degree to finish! So, I threw all those urges away and focused on my exams. Soon after my exams, I was due to go on a holiday to Spain and again I fought the urge to take them out, I had a low luggage allowance (15kg!) and I couldn’t afford to use precious space and weight on my hair products.

My last hairstyle with the braids in 😦

I’m glad I kept the braids in for my trip, the maintenance was a breeze, and for some reason i felt more comfortable going into the sea with braided hair than loose hair, I don’t really know why. A reason I think I got the itch again was the whole build up fear again, especially as I had to remove some braids around my edges and experienced huuuuggggeeee fluff balls and alarming hair loss. I was kind of scared for the rest of the hair, and hoped I still had hair left. This is the amount of hair I lost during the whole washing process..

Not bad for two months!

Spain was so good! I had so much fun, so many laughs, so much sun, so much food 😀 (i like food). I really enjoyed being with my favourite girlies and it was so amazing being with them as it marked our graduation from university, so it was also tinged with a bit of sadness. Two days after I was back I started on my braids and took them down the exact same way as I did in my Kinky Twist Takedown blog post a while back. The only difference being the oil I used, to be honest I used a random mix I found in my room which probably consisted of jojoba, grapeseed and a bit of rosemary oils. Here you can really see the difference between that time and now, my hair has grown a bit in the past 6 or so months.

looks like a good two inches, yay!

I missed my one year natural length check because my hair was in braids, so instead I may do a random 15 month check or something, just because I don’t have any. And here you can see my hair calmly twisted into around 20 twists, it looks so peaceful here. Seeing this picture gave me an idea, since I don’t have a name for my hair, why not switch it up and give her a name depending on her state of being, and since my name ‘SIMI’  means rest in my native language Yoruba I thought i’d call her the Japanese word for rest, Yasumi (休み) I guess that’s her name when she’s in a protective style like the twists I have in now.

I like the scarf look 😀

So i’ve washed and deep conditioned and i’m wearing these twists to stretch my hair for a flat twist and curl i’m planning to have in tomorrow night, but I got the inspiration for this process from naptural85’s youtube channel and her results were pretty nice so I may not flat twist it just yet, i’ll show you the results tomorrow.

Simi

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Guess who’s back!

Hola amigos,

Guess where I am again 😀 thats right, Spain! I only just left about 7 weeks ago but I couldn’t get enough of the sun, sea and sand it had to offer. Instead of Marbella which is in Costa Del Sol (the sunny coast) we are in Benidorm in Costa Blanca (white coast) incidentally the two happen to be quite close to each other.

As expected, we have been living it up, taking full advantage of the glorious weather to really see what benidorm has to offer. This is our fourth day here and so far we’ve done a bit of exploring.

On our first night we felt a bit tired and because we overslept and missed dinner, we just went to a Chinese buffet for a quiet night in.

On our second day we had a bit of a wander around the area of our hotel, taking note of where the bars and clubs were as well as the shops and beaches. At night we went to check out the benidorm clubs. Having heard that there was a wild nightlife, I was excited to see how people lived it up on this side of the Mediterranean.

On our third day we decided to lounge around during the day taking long naps and just taking time to chill out. We went for a morning jog to nicely start the day and just flopped straight back into bed after breakfast. In the evening we decided to go for a different scene and visit a chilled out bar. We had a great time watching various acts such as a Motown group and europes best Lady Gaga impersonator.

And today, we reached the halfway mark of our holiday 😦 which we decided to spend at the beach. Before the beach we had a tasty lunch at a western saloon, you really can’t go wrong with some chunky chips, half a rack of ribs and a cocktail to seal the deal.

My hair is still in my braids which had made my life so much easier in terms of styling and maintenance. I haven’t really done anything adventurous with them because even though they aren’t full, its still hard for me to fit my little hands around them to style them properly but oh well, i’m enjoying them all the same.