-For one, I damn sure won't be bleaching my own locs anymore. Remember the purple loc? I had to bleach it so that the color would take. Wellll, the genius that is me did not completely rinse out all of the bleach. When the purple faded away, I was left with a white tip. A good 3 inches of the loc is so thin. It is dry and brittle and is a reminder of my stupidity. Ah well...we live and learn, right?
-I try not to wear the locs in ponytails too often. As hot as they are in my face, I'd much rather wear them down because I know there isn't any tugging.
-I massage my scalp nightly.
-I marry them! Combining locs is a popular method in the loc'ing community. To be honest, I never wanted to do this. I never considered that thinner locs would force me to do it and for that reason I have dealing with thoughts like, "Maybe I should cut my locs off and start over with a new set of thicker locs". I doubt I'll do that but I think about it often. Thanks to the advice from my fellow loc sisters, I'm a little more confident about combining my locs to get the look I want.
In the meantime, here's what I do...
Take these two locs...
See how skinny they are? Well, NOT skinny but too skinny for me. Paranoia tells me that as they get longer and mature, they'll get even skinnier. And eventually they may pop off. So I marry them.
I do this by 2-stranding the two locs together.
I am sure to go in the same direction as my hair is twisted. I also make sure that I have at least an inch of new growth to work with.
The ends of married locs are tricky. While I don't mind the double loc look, I wouldn't want them ALL over. I find myself having to pick the ends of the each single loc.
After I've got a bit of 'fro hair' to work with, I twist and viola!
The good news is, most of the locs that have to be combined are covered by non-married locs.
This is good for me because I don't like newlywed locs to stand out as much.
If you plan on combining, start early! Here's a loc that I combined within the first 6 months or so.
You can't even tell that they were two locs, can you? My plan is to completely combine as many locs as I need to within the next month. My locs are still fuzzy and far from mature so combining shouldn't be a problem now.
And here's a double loc/2 headed dragon loc...
I have about 4 of them. I remember seeing these in my friends' locs and wondering how that happened. His entire head of locs all the double end like that. Definitely not my preference but I'd rather have those than have super skinny locs. I will more than likely cut the ends of those on day.
Don't give me that look. I'm not against cutting my locs. Shooo....I live in Florida and I haven't had hair growing down this long since 2004. It's hot!
Those that latch, I'm assuming can combine by latching two locs together. I hear that Sisterlock'ers do the same.
Chime in and tell me how you combine your locs. Any tips or tricks?
If your preference is skinny locs, rock on! You have to do what works for you but lately I've really been embracing the look and maintenance of thicker locs. I have about 170-somethin' locs but I'm sure I'll have a good 150 by the time I'm done combining. That's almost 50 less locs from when the locs were first installed!
