Attn: alexandra_k

Yay good to hear!

Yes I understand doing it from wet means more contact with the heat but *shrug* I don't think I'd be doing that heaps. I just used it on dry hair last time anyway.

Like you say practice will make perfect!

yeah.

hairdressers are funny creatures...

they reccomend that you not wash your hair more than you need to. typically they say that once a week is optimal though maybe twice a week if you have an oily scalp.

but they typically wash and heat-style their hair everyday.

i guess thats how come they say 'trims every 4-6 weeks'. if you heat-style your hair frequently i would guess that you should indeed do that to help prevent split ends and the like.

i'll get mine trimmed more regularly now...

i don't mind if it grow a little more slowly, so long as it doesn't look terrible while its growing, however :-)

hmmmm weird. my hairdresser asked me if i wash my hair most days and says it's fine as long as you use a frequent use shampoo.

yea i am going to do 7 weeks as i was recommended for next trim ...

I am usually really lazy with hair stuff, but i am going to be good now ... i am :>

yeah. i think the notion is that your scalp produces oils which are great for smoothing and protecting your hair and making it appear all shiny. if you have a soft brush and you brush your hair you can brush the oils from the scalp down along the length of your hair and that makes it go all nice and shiny and protected. thats kinda why... your scalp makes the oil.

shampoo strips the oil out of your hair. frequent use shampoo is milder, but the point of shampoo is to remove the oil, i guess. if you wash your hair very frequently then your scalp tends to try and compensate by producing more oil and before you know it you need to wash it every day...

a lot of the products that we put in our hair to help smooth our hair and make it shiny and protected basically function (when all goes well and they are good products) to put that oil (that we just removed with the shampoo) back into our hair.

kind of strip it out then replace it with something synthetic lol.

the things we do ;-)

the oil is how come dreds get to be self cleaning. you don't shampoo dreds, you just rinse them with water to get the dust off basically, lol. takes a little time but the scalp oils basically wash / clense the hair without your needing to shampoo.

i guess the basic issue with the scalp oils is that they don't smell as fresh and pleasant as shampoo and other products. i'm not sure that they smell unpleasant, exactly, but it certainly doesn't smell as good as the products we buy...

i don't have the ideal soft bristle brush for brushing my hair, but the brush i do have does work to distribute the oils a bit. when i wash my hair i use just a tiny bit of shampoo and lather it between my hands first and try and massage it into my scalp without getting much of it on the rest of my hair (so as not to remove the oils). then condition the crap out of the ends... it kinda works for me but... who knows...

i haven't done this for a long time... but as a teenager i used to use a little bit of baby oil on my hair after shampooing (because my mother insisted on buying this nasty conditioner that made my hair superfluffy). you need to rinse it out with warm water, though. not sure if that helps or not... dunno... probably in the realm of folk myth...

i did notice, however, that one of the leave in conditioning treatments that i brought made a big claim of having 'sunflower oils' as an ingredient. sunflower oil...

PS... oils make showers VERY slippy

yea but my hair gets yucky if i don't wash it most day s...

oooh i like good dreds. a friend used to wax his all the time - they were beautiful.

i need a good brush ....

yeah. apparently the more you wash it the more you need to wash it and so it gets to be something of a cycle (so people often get to washing it everyday).

i hear you though. if i wash my hair in the evening... the next day it wants to be fluffy... the day after it settles down... the day after that it is all happy... the next day i start to think it needs a wash... the next day it definately needs a wash. sigh.

its tempting for me to use a lot of products (so i do) so that it isn't fluffy. but that speeds up the whole process of it looking like it needs a wash. if i put enough products in it so it looks optimal then it looks like it needs a wash the next day.

i do have sympathy for the washing it every day and then throwing the products in notion...

but i dunno...

hairdresser seemed to think that it would be optimal for me to wash my hair weekly but that was the ***** hairdresser who chopped my hair so i'm dubious... have a friend who is a hairdresser though and she said that yeah, you shouldn't wash it more than you HAVE to though of course she washed it and heat-styled hers everyday so it looked optimal (as you kind of have to do if you are a hairdresser, i guess).

so... who the f knows... i might try some baby oil in a bit...

Heh.

I actually think I need a really good shine serum. I used to have some awesome stuff but I have NO idea what it was ....

I have to wash my hair most days, cos I feel weird if I don't ... like I haven't properly showered or something.

yes i know it sounds odd ...

I had extremely long hair for 18 years... always waist-length or longer. I just got it chopped to shoulder-length about 3 months ago.

Before I bleached it, I had to wash it everyday because it got greasy. My hair was naturally very shiny. I didn't have to use conditioner or any shine products on it... before I started dyeing and bleaching it 3 years ago.

After I bleached it, my stylist recommended only washing it with shampoo once a week... diluting the shampoo (1/2 water) and using it only on my scalp and then using lots of conditioner and following with a shine serum (I used Redken Glass).

Since I'm a smoker (and can't stand the smell of smoky hair) and was used to having nice-smelling hair from washing it everyday, she told me to do a conditioner-only wash most days. I would just use a little bit of conditioner instead of shampoo. Most conditioners contain a small amount of sodium lauryl sulfate, the same cleaning ingredient that most shampoos contain... so they clean the hair and leave it smelling fresh, but don't strip out the oils. I also brushed my hair (once it dried) with a Mason Pearson boar bristle brush. It's great for getting your hair really shiny -- working the natural oils through the length of your hair. Mason Pearsons are very pricey (mine was about $200). If I hadn't gotten it as a gift, I don't think I ever would have paid that much for a hairbrush. I'm glad I have it though. It's an awesome brush.