Dreadlocks

In December I went to a salon in Minneapolis and had dreadlocks done. The dreads were created with the use of a "dread perm" and I thought all was well.

The instructions they provided were:

1. Do not wash hair for 3-4 weeks
2. Roll dreads, once/week, with lock tightening gel.
3. Come back in a couple months for a dread maintenance

I ended up needing a dread maintenance at 4 weeks because my hair grows really fast (since December 18th my hair has grown around 1 1/2" - maybe more...) and because the dreads were getting really lumpy and frizzy. I felt like a dreadlocks failure because I was following the instructions perfectly and my dreads were not coming out well.  I thought I was going to have to cut them off and I was quite sad about it all. I realized the once-a-week rolling wasn't going to work for me, but did not know exactly what I should do. I started looking around the web for more information about dreadlocks and ran across the DreadHead HQ website.

On the DHHQ site I learned that  that I should be washing my hair a couple times/week; I should be rolling my dreads everyday instead of once/week; and I did not have to pay a salon $50/hour to do my dread maintenance. After reading the site from cover-to-cover I figured out that I could have done a better job getting my dreads started without going to a salon (umm... $350.00, oh well.... live and learn).

DHHQ has a toll-free number. I called it and talked to Betseh. She was generous with information, helpful, and supportive. After hearing that I'd had a dread perm she was pretty worried about the state of my dreads, but after seeing the photos on Facebook, she said that my dreads looked remarkably well, considering. We talked about how I could rescue them and get them on  track to being exactly what I wanted them to be... 

So now I've done my first waxing (last weekend) and I've been rolling each dread for 1 minute each night (all 80 of them). I don't really fit nicely into the DHHQ alternating maintenance routine since my dreads were salon built and the perm did make them dread quite a bit right away, so I'm kind of coming up with my own way to work my way into an alternating schedule. I'm counting all the time since I had the dreads done as the first month. This past week I've had the initial waxing in my dreads and I'll continue that until next weekend. Then I'll wash out the wax and start the Week A week.

I've got great expectations - already I've noticed that my dreads are much less ziggiedy-zaggiedy and lumpy after just one week of the DreadHeadHQ method... stay tuned.

I'm working in the studio here - on a mosaic.