Hello There Hair World

Hello ladies.  Welcome to my first posting about natural hair.  I have to admit that I am not 100% natural.  I permed  the front of my hair just a month ago.  I had my whole head permed back in like October.  But due to certain financial restraints, I have decided to go AU NATURALE!  I have decided to share my experience with others since there are so many sisters out there going through or contemplating doing the same thing.  I am no expert by any means, I just have a lot of products and those that I buy will NOT be expensive.  I just want to maintain my own real hair on a budget.  I am not all afro centric and want to “get back to my roots”.  I was periodically post pictures and stories about my younger sister Kiah.  As you will note she has beautiful hair and does absolutely NOTHING to maintain it.  So I will be chronically both of our experiences.  My sister really is natural.  The last time she got a perm was about a year ago.  She claims that already she has absolutely no perm in her hair, which might be true since her hair grows like a mile a minute. GRRRR!

Anyways, so tonight I removed my weave.  I had it in since January of this year.  I had been perming the front exposed parts to keep everything looking fresh.  In the process of flat ironing the front I completely broke off one side of the front of my hair.  Tonight I cut out the thread and tried my best to gently remove all of the tracks.  Of course I pulled some of my hair out.  Then I took a wide tooth comb and combed from the ends for a little bit.  I hopped in the shower and took the shower head down in order to shampoo my hair.  I turned the water down to cool.  I tried unsuccessfully to get lather from the fancy African soap shampoo.  I ended up using this Keratin shampoo and it lathered up nicely.  I then rinsed all the shampoo out and globbed on the African soap conditioner.  I left this in as I showered with hot water.  I then used a new Tangle Teaser brush that my friend (who’s also natural) urged me to purchase for $10!  I was like WHAT!? , but if it works it works then I guess it's worth it.  Idk.  There was hair being pulled out like it normally would’ve had I used my wide tooth comb.  I rinsed out the conditioner with the cool water and patted it dry with a hand towel.  I then untangled my hair using the Tangle Teaser while it was damp.  There were a few knots.  My sister claims that this was from the permed fragile ends contending with the thick natural new growth and the natural was prevailing.  I tried not to keep pulling my hair out.

Next, I parted my hair into small sections and began to alternate between curl formers, soft flexible foam curlers and in the back section I used old fashioned hard curlers.  The hard curlers were only used because I ran out of curlformers.  (I was cheap and only bought 2 replacement packs for $12.99 each instead of buying the $70 starter kit.)  I then wrapped my curler-bound hair in silk scarf.  I hope tomorrow that my hair looks decent enough to go to work and not look a fool.

I am about to help my sister out.  I intend to use leave-in conditioner and gel to coat her hair lightly.  Then I am going to wrap her hair up with larger foam curlers.  I hope we both turn out alright.  We shall see. J