I Tried African Threading on My Natural Hair (Part 2)

 Okay. folks. I lasted four and a half days. I took the threading out today because I had so much shea butter in that my head was just slick! LOL

So, I am going to do a wash and re-thread my hair tonight or tomorrow. This time, I am making a few changes:

• I will NOT use nearly as much shea butter. I could barely pull my hair apart for all the shea.
• I will steam my hair when I apply my leave-in moisturizers (prior to threading).
• I am going to use 3 pieces of yarn for each threading. I learned this from a video. I can then thread all the way down the length of my hair and braid the ends of yarn. Last time I had exposed ends.
• I am going to spray the yarn with moisturizer before or after threading. (When I did the takedown this time, I noticed that the shea had kept the yarn from drying out my hair. A LOT of shea was left in that yarn...)
• I am going to attempt to be more uniform in the size of the threaded sections. Last time, I had some very large and very small sections. This made it a pain to scarf-wrap my hair every day. 
• I'm also going to measure and pre-cut my yarn this time. Last time, I liked pulling strands from the ball and cutting but I had some uneven yarn pieces. I would rather have more yarn than having to tie on additional pieces when I run short.

All in all, though, I am pretty thrilled with the anti-shrinkage. I haven't seen my hair at this length since the last time I straightened with an electric appliance. And I didn't do any damage. Love that!

By the way, I found an old facial steamer I had gotten to review a few years ago. The nozzle sprays wide enough that I can get a wide reach. I had no idea how to use it for my hair until the past several weeks of reading up on using steam for hair care. I actually even have my AfroSheen Steam mask to use. We'll see how that goes. 

Here is a contrast of what my hair looked like before and after the 1st attempt (using a single wrap). Keep in mind that I have not washed out the clump of dried shea butter in the After photos...

This is what the nape/backside looked like.

That was a tricky mirror shot

Now that I am finishing this post the day after I started all the above...

I did not end up moisturizing my yarn. I forgot. I did use 3 strands this time and that did make the ends easier to work with. I did go much lighter on shea. I used shea to seal my hair after washing but stuck to some lighter leave-in products for threading and am moisturizing my scalp daily with JBCO.

Even with this being my 2nd time, I still had problems starting at the root (without getting it too tight or too loose), and I can never judge the best measure of the yarn. I guess I will get better the more I thread.

For now, I am really pleased with this threading and I feel comfortable enough leaving it in for a week.  When I do the next takedown, I will just update this post with any news and photos.

Peace

--Free