It's a Dry-Dry Hair Day

Obviously, I am not exempt from bad hair days.

One of the reasons I'm blogging more regularly these days is to track what is and isn't working for my hair.  Now when I first chopped off my locs to experiment with the loose natural look, I diligently kept track of everything I used, uploading pics and reviews to my fotki regularly.  I was all over the message boards, e.g. naturallycurly.com's 3c, 4a, 4b, etc.

Then somewhere along the way -- probably around the time I was finishing grad school -- I really lost track of my methods.  I made the mistake of deleting some product info from my fotki, thinking it was irrelevant/outdated.  Now in hindsight I wish I had kept it.


I'm dealing with dry hair like never before.  I have fine, highly-porous hair, which just guzzles my favorite SheaMoisture products.  I think I have a pretty good idea of what I've done wrong, but it's going to take experimentation (again) for me to get my process back in order.

Some ideas:

• Re-introduce humectants in the summer - although some swear by anti-humectants (think "water repellants") in humid environments, I actually like the way humectants, such as glycerin, draw the water out of the air and into my hair.  I'm not a pro regarding this stuff, so if I got my definitions mixed up, forgive me.  (Note:  I'm really OK with not having defined curls and "set" styles.)
• Stop using so much oil-n-butter - I'm pretty sure oils (e.g. grapeseed, olive) and butters (shea, mango) work better for me in the colder months than during the warmer ones.  But somehow I've found myself using them just as frequently as I did six months ago.  Might be time to cut that out, or at least try using them less often.
• Get a trim - I've been kind of DIY lately regarding my hair, but I know that when I was going to my natural stylist, I had better results.  I got trims about 4 times a year, preserving my ends, and my hair thrived.  So as much as I'd love to save the $$$, I might be paying Krika a visit soon.

So I'll start with these three things one at a time and see what happens.  Anyone else having these issues?  

I also think I need to stretch my hair consistently and stop with the wash-n-gos, because my hair is just at a length now where it's going to shrink and tangle easily.  I'm longing to try Curl Formers, but I'm thinking the humidity might destroy the stretched effect.