Since June, I've been letting my hair grow freely with one intent in mind: get dreadlocks. I've always wanted them, at least to try for a while, and now I have a great opportunity to try them out.
A couple of weeks ago, Joy and I attempted to backcomb my hair (with some advice from Ami). We sectioned off all of the hair, and she attempted to backcomb the bottom-back of my hair. Well, that didn't work out too well. Joy had a hard time with the actual combing, and it wasn't looking right. A ton of conditioner later, I had reversed what was done.
We sought some additional help. Luckily, our neighbors Eddy and Florida have had some experience in getting dreads together. Opposed to using the backcomb route, which didn't work out so well, they went the "twisting" route. Basically, you section the hair off, apply a little bit of a locking-gel and bees wax mix, and twist the sections tightly. Every two weeks or so, apply some more locking-gel to the roots and keep on twisting. Eventually, the hair will matte and eventually dread.
A week ago we started the process. Eddy came over and helped Joy start twisting. They sectioned off most of my hair and he showed her how to twist. 4 days later (with 12 hours of work, thank you Joy!), we finished all the twisting. Here is a small gallery of the process:
[gallery orderby="title" link="file"]
Next step: maintenance and waiting. I'll keep updating the blog with the progress (I'm really hoping this works). If you'd like to follow the progress, you can check out this link: "dreadlocks" tag. That link will show only the progress of the 'locks (then you don't have to sift through all of my other posts).
Let me know what you think! Suggestions, comments, questions. Feel free.
[update]For reference, we started this process on March 21, 2010[/update]