Loc Jewelry

Introducing Knappy Soul Kreations

Like alot of us with locs I've been searching high and low to find me some loc jewelry and adornments to further express my individualism and to dress up my locs, all to no avail. I've located 3 sites online that sell loc jewelry and adornments, but they are either not my type or too expensive for just one piece. Also I'd like to be able to see and touch the loc jewelry before I purchase it, to try things on to see how they look, feel the energy of things, you know touch and feel the adornments so buying them online really wasn't an appealing option to someone like me. So all that was left for me to do was to learn how to make them myself. That way I can use colors, styles and materials that I like. And what was funny to me is that I realized that I had a dream of creating my own hair jewelry years ago when I first started loc'ing but I got distracted by adjusting to my new hair and forgot all about my dream, that is until I got my hair situated and now that I'm looking for new ways to decorate my locs I rememberd my long lost dream of creating my own pieces. So now here I am full circle again, learning to do something that I've wanted to do for a long time. At first it was seemed to be a very daunting task because I had no idea where to start or how to go about things. I asked a few people for pointers but I found out that some people are really selfish with sharing knowledge, but it didnt stop or break me, all it did was make me want to create my own pieces that much more! After my sister found me a wonderful book on jewelry making everything else fell into place perfectly. I've created my first pieces so far and I'd like to share them. Let me know what you think about! Now introducting Knappy Soul Kreations!!



my very first kreations

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii57/Mellonee/topspiral.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii57/Mellonee/newpiece2.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii57/Mellonee/doublespiral.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii57/Mellonee/locjewelry008.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii57/Mellonee/locjewelry007.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii57/Mellonee/locjewelry006.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii57/Mellonee/locjewelry004.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii57/Mellonee/locjewelry002.jpg

First Curly Set

I finally did a curly set and it came out so cute. Someone in one of the lock groups I'm apart of suggested using pipe cleaners found at Wal-mart (in the arts and crafts section) and using them to do a curly set. They come about 100 in a package and the package is about $1-2. I did the set on dry hair or at least not dripping wet from a recent wash. The products I used were JML setting lotion and Knappy Scents which is a hair oil that I create. I started at the back of my head and worked my way to the top. I sprayed each section with KS and JML until damp, then starting with the tip of my locks I rolled them under on the pipe cleaner and then took the remaining part of the pipe cleaner and wrapped it around the rolled up section to secure the pipe cleaner. I hope that makes sense. It took me about 1.5 hours to roll my who head and then I sat under the hair dryer for about 45 min to an hour. I let my hair air dry for another 45 minutes while I got dressed and ready to go. I was really surprised and happy with the outcome, especially since it was my first time doing it. Since I started with the back, that part seemed to have the tighest curl giving me a bob type bouncy look. While I love the hairstyle, I have to admit that I was not prepared for how hot it was going to be having all that hair hanging and bouncing around in this Houston humidity. Everyday since I did the set my curls have been gradually falling but here I am right now 12 days later and I still have minor curls at the ends of my locks. I'm wondering how long I will have them or if I'll have to wash my hair to get the set out. Well enjoy the pics and until next time, be blessed!







This is the curly set pulled up with bangs





And this is the next day after my curls fell a smidget

The Good, The Bad and The Latching

Just when I thought that I had settled into the perfect combination of latching and palm rolling I realized that I had to revamp some things. See I live in Houston, TX where the summers are hot as hell and very very humid which makes having shoulder length thick locks sometimes be a pain in the butt! Don't get me wrong I love my locks but this is the longest and thickest that my hair has ever been in my entire life so learning to deal with it has been a little different for me. With that said, I love to swim and I work out so that means that the palm rolling isn't really giving me as much time in between retwists as the latching is giving me. Since I've been latching from the crown of my head to the nape area it has made a dramatic difference in my retwist time from palm rolling my entire head, but I am finding that I am having to retwist the front every few days to maintain the level of neatness that I like and we all know the damage and weakness that over-twisting can do to the rootbed so I am left looking like I have a 2-3 inch afro with dreads sticking out and I hate hate hate that look!!! So last weekend I latched my entire head for the first time and I feel that I did a very good job as far as catching all the little stray hairs that I could to achieve the neat fuzzless look of the palm roll and while I am proud of the job I did, I find that I dont have the same level of personal satisfaction as I do when I palm roll the front. My baby hairs lay down for a while and I have the shine on the palm rolled new growth areas and it just looked so smooth laying on my forehead, and now I have my curly beady beets on my hair line, long stray hairs that didnt want to be latched and I have a perpetual 'halo of fuzz' surrounding my head! Yea I'm still cute and rocking my locks, but I guess I just have to get use to this fuzz which is something that I havent really had to deal with so much when I palm roll. But the palm roll cannot handle my swimming and workout habits nor can it deal with the level of humidy that we have in Texas so I am going to take the suggestion of one of my fellow group members and do a straw/roller set on my locks and see if that hides the HOF 'halo of fuzz' and lets me enjoy my locks again. I will document my experiment with the set and share pics.

Lazy Locks Care

Lately I have been living this crazy lazy life where I haven't been doing anything to my locks and while I love this freedom, I can't help but feel like I am taking my hair for granted and creating some bad hair habits for myself that will come back to bite me in the butt or in a lock, should I say. I haven't created a bottle of hair oils in like 2 or 3 months and have been relying on an occasion spray of Pink Oil moisturizer hair sheen to oil my locks!! How freaking sad is that. And I say that I love my hair! I've also gone two months without retwisting the back of my hair ever since I did my last latch at the beginning of April which is something that is new to me. For that reason alone I love the latch because while I could use a retightening, it doesn't look anywhere near as fuzzy and unkempt as it would have, had it been palm rolled. But back to my laziness. I'm sitting here trying to figure out what I've been thinking and wondering why I would get so complacent on something that is so important to me and that's where I came up with the idea that I am taking my hair and it's health for granted. Having beautiful healthy locks is a lifetime process and it's not something that I can just put on the back burner and think about every now and then. One of the misconceptions that I had when I began this journey is that I would get to a point where I wouldn't have to do any maintenance on my hair except for my monthly retwist, but as I walked this path I've come to realize thats it's more than that. I'm not complaining about my hair at all, just stating that I didn't necessarily picture the work that came with maintaining my locks even at 3 years but I wouldn't change this decision for anything in the world. I love my locks! Knappy, fuzzy, and all! I just need to get back in the groove of my hair care regime that keeps my hair growing fast, healthy and beautifully. So now I pledge to myself to get to Whole Foods Market this weekend and buy my oils so that I can make me a batch of Knappy Scents and satisfy my hair before it starts to show my negligence and then I will be reall7 sick and it will only be my own fault. Well now that I've digressed let me go and get started.

The Color Experiment

I've been wanting to color my hair for the longest, I just didn't know how I wanted to color it and what colors I wanted to use. Well I finally made a decision, enlisted the help of some friends and got to work. I wanted my roots to be black and my tips to be blonde, so we decided to start with the black. First we used rubber bands to section off where I wanted the tips to start and then we foiled the ends, and then applied the black hair color. We let that sit then we washed it out and applied conditioner which I left on for about 45 min. After I washed the conditoner out, I realized two things. A) almost 4 hours had passed and I had to get to sleep to get up early for my trip to Atlanta and B) I liked the color of the tips as they were so I decided to leave my hair as it was and go to sleep. So without any further delay, here are the pics. Enjoy!

Fuzzy by Nature

While my locks are still neat and you can still see scalp, my locks are hella fuzzy and I am trying to figure out why and after racking my brain I think I know what the issue or issues is. I think I was off on the measurement of one of my extra ingrediants to my ORS mixture on this last batch I whipped up or I didnt put enough product on my hair for the retwist. Hmmmmm. As I sit here at my desk looking at my hair in this compact mirror I can't help but be a little annoyed. It hasn't even been a full week since my retwist so this is totally unacceptable to me, especially since I have been tying my hair up every night and even when I am just hanging around the house. So this means tonight before I go to bed, I will be re-palmrolling these locks in the top to get rid of the fuzz. I wonder if I am entering a new phase of my locks as far as maturity. My 3 year loc'aversary will be on June 16, 2008 so it's plausible that's why my locs are fuzzier than usual. I'll be paying very close attention to my locs over the next few weeks to see if I notice anything different with them.

Also last night, while watching a Lord of the Rings marathon, I sat up with my nail file, tweezers, small tooth comb and motions leave in condioner and picked some lint out of some locs! It was wonderful. Its nice to be able to pull out random locs and find NO LINT in them, and I didn't lose anywhere near as much hair as I thought I would by picking the ends apart. What I got was alot of was stray hairs and the hairs that were 'lint up' if that makes sense. I would pick up as far as I saw lint, but I never had to pick up more than than an inch and for the ones that I picked closest to the inch I two strand twisted once I got the lint out. This may bother some loc wearers that I am picking my ends apart, but I prefer the look of the curly q end anyway, and I can't see myself using a majic marker (even if I could find one that matches my hair color) b/c that is just covering up the problem, and not getting rid of it. And I'm not saying anything is wrong with people who do use the majic marker, it's just not for me. I'd rather pick that color over. Anyhow, I'll get some pictures of my ends and the lint picking process that I go thru up so you can see what it is that I'm talking about. Thanks for stopping by and Stay Knappy!!

Ouch my head hurt, but my hair got retwisted

Well as you can see from above I finally retwisted my locks! Thank the Lord that it is finally over and I can go on beautifully for the next 3-4 weeks before I have to start thinking about this all over again. Don't get me wrong, while it may seem like I am complaining, I'm not, it's just that retwist time is the worse time for me because I don't like sitting still to retwist, my arms hurt, and then there is the dang dryer time. However the latter has just been almost eradicated with my new retwist/retightening regime. What I dont have pictures of, is the back of my locks which were latched! My bff retightened the back and mid top using the latch tool. There are pro's and con's to it in my opinion, and since this is my blog my opinion would matter. LOL!

Anyway, let's start with the pro's.

• I can get my hair wet and wash whenever I want
• No worry of unraveling
• Smaller thinner locks feel more secure with the latch
• Dont have to sit under the dryer

Now for the con's

• Man that ish hurts when pulling locks with a fat end thru!
• Is hard for me to do the latch on my locks right now
• The fact that I love the look of the coil to the look of the latch
• The fuzz that is still on the locks from not palm rolling

So to get the best of both worlds, I decided to continue to palm roll the front, top and front-sides of my hair and to latch the back and mid top, that way I can still get it wet without having to worry about retwisting my whole head since it only takes me about 20 minutes to palm roll the front.

I am very happy with the results, except for the small ache in my scalp from the latching. Some people will probably say that they are too tight and some probably are since she likes to "see scalp" as she says. I have my Knappy Scents that I have been spraying on my locks and scalp and it feels so good on those tight locks. But I prefer it be tighter than loose, that way I know it'll be neater longer.

Knappier than I've been since I locked up

I still havent retwisted my hair! I'm now sporting head bands to cover my extra fuzzy new growth. Friday I washed my hair which is normal, but what isnt normal is that I didnt immediately retwist as I always do. I oiled and conditioned my hair and put a head scarf on because I had some errands to run and I had to get on the road to go to Austin to see about my grandma. So now here I am on Tuesday, still untwisted and knappier than ever. Now on the good side, I am enjoying seeing my knatural wave pattern after I take the scarf off and my newgrowth is laying down, however when I wake up in the morning and my scarf had slid off I'm looking like I have a mini fro with dreads sticking out and I am not feeeling that look at aaaalllll! Some people dont mind that look, but it is not for me. Over the weekend I purchased a crochet latch and had a girlfriend try it out on the back of my head. She did about three or four rows before I had to come back home and we both like it for the back of my hair. I will continue to palm roll the top front because I prefer the look of the palm roll to the latch. I was going to attempt to try to latch the rest of the back last night, but got caught up cutting pictures out for my vision board and book, but I will give it a try most def this evening because I can not go another day like this. If all else fails I'll just palm roll the rest of my hair until next time. We'll I will will take some pictures and let ya'll see what happens. Stay Knappy!

One of those 'knappy days'!

My hair is so knappy and frizzy that it doesn't make any sense. I've been claiming that I am going to wash and retighten my hair for the last two weeks, but I have been so lazy. Locs are great to have because of the simplicity of getting up and going in the morning, but on the same token it can be a curse because you can get to a point where you don't even want to wash your hair. Or at least I do. Now my locs dont stink or anything like that so I don't feel any pressure or need to rush and do my hair, but I am getting tired of looking like I have a 1-2 inch fro with locs sticking up out of them! LOL My non locked friends say "what? I dont see nothing, you look good girl" but as I look at my self in the portable mirror I realize that I cant even see my scalp. Good grief. The fuzzies and stray hairs are taking over like crazy!! I need to just break down and do it!! Maybe tomorrow!