Over the past two years, I’ve used heat twice on my birthday to help me with my annual length check ( post can be found here), and to also trim my ends if needed. But on both occasions, I hated how dry my hair felt afterwards.
This year, as I was dreading the heat experience again, I came across African Threading on The Kink and I blog. How could I have forgotten this method of stretching hair? I remember when I was a lot younger, my mum used to take me to the hair braiders in the open market to style my hair using thread. So in my excitement I drove to the open market and bought loads of rubber thread at N25 each.
On my birthday, I quickly washed and conditioned my hair to prep for styling. Bear in mind that I have no previous experience in threading my hair myself. I was absolutely clueless on how much pressure to apply when wrapping the thread around my hair and how to tie up the thread on the ends of my hair when I was done. The only knowledge I had, was from a couple of YouTube videos and what I could recall from my memory when I was younger.
Unperturbed, I kept going until I was finally done. It took me about two hours, which is very long for styling in my opinion but I guess if I had more experience it should have taken way less time.
My intention was to leave the thread in for about two hours to completely stretch my hair but after 30 minutes I began to get a throbbing headache. I had made the thread too tight and my scalp was crying out. Despite the pain, I stuck to my two hours mark before I took out the thread, but unfortunately, only my ends were dry and the rest of my hair was still damp and poofy. NOT GOOD. I was running out of time and I needed to get ice cream before the store closed so the first thing that came to my mind was, “Comb your hair out Chinwe”, and I reached for the afro comb. In my haste, I was still gentle with my hair and it only took me an extra 30 minutes to complete my whole head. As for how I styled it, I just made a little bun in front and let the rest of the hair blow in the wind.
In the end, I’m totally happy with how my hair turned out. 🙂
9 comments
You have amazing hair!!
Love your hairstyle!!
Thank-you!
Is there a way you can buy for a person in South africa and post it? How much would it cost to post it?
Yup it’s possible! If its shipped through UPS or DHL it costs 1298.86 rand which sounds like a lot but if you don’t mind or have any other ideas, let me know so I can get it to you!?