Hair!

So, I tried my hands at a slightly more complicated twist style in Lila's hair. As you can see from previous posts, the most daring I have gotten is two flat twists going along the front of her hair line (ear to ear), the rest of her hair pulled back into two puffs or big braids. The two flat twists lasted for almost a week, way longer than I anticipated, and I just like the way they look. And until I graduate to cornrows, it's all I have in my bag 'o tricks.

My style plan was to have her hair parted in the middle, and rows of flat twists running down on each side into a pigtail. So, here is the fruit of my labor:

While I can't say that I'm incredibly happy with the final results, I do think that it's not horrible for a first effort. The whole thing took me over an hour, and would have taken me longer had I not done some preliminary parting of her hair after I washed and detangled last night. The parts are not perfect, but her scalp has quite a bit of give, so even when you think you have a straight line, once you pull the hair into the final style it can be completely off. Ah well, practice practice, I guess.

There were two places in the style where I really was stuck: first, I had planned on changing the twist into a braid once the twist reached the end of the hairline. But each time I tried, it just didn't work. How do I create the 3rd strand? I tried using the last bit of "picked up" hair for the twist, but it was tiny compared to the two twist sections, thus making a very lopsided braid. Which then leads to my second issue: since each row was not secured into a braid, I had a devil of a time trying to keep the finished twists nice & tight while moving on to the next row. I'm pretty sure if I can figure out how to turn each flat twist into a braid I'll be made in the shade.

Because of the above issues, her twists aren't super tight, and I'm not optimistic that they will last very long. I did prep each section with Blended Cutie's Jelly Cream which should help hold the style (I'm convinced it is what helped her other twist style stay in almost a week).

So, hopefully this will be a recurring addition to my blog. You can all come with me as I journey into the wonderful and daunting world of African hair. I'm angling to get a mannequin head for my birthday to practice cornrowing (hint hint). Very exciting!