Be Prepared!

Be preeeepaaaared! Think Scar from Lion King. Actually, go to YouTube.com and watch all the good Disney villain songs from Be Prepared to Kill the Beast to Hellfire to Poor Unfortunate Souls... You'll enjoy it.

There are a couple of ways to get prepared for dreadlocks, and I have been working on them. One of the first is, you need to have hair. And that hair needs to be at least three inches long. Seeing my before picture, you know that my hair is obviously longer than three inches... in the front. I said it was stacked (or layered) in the back. It's taken a bit to get some of that grown out. But three inches is the minimum, at four inches DreadHeadHQ can promise it will lock (with their kit), and six to eight is preferred.

Another way to prepare is to start washing your hair with Dread Soap to get your hair used to it and to get it really clean from all the other stuff (with residue) you have been washing it with.

New dreads can be washed frequently, but it helps them if they aren't. Washing will pull hair out of it and the more infrequently they are washed the more chance it gets to lock. That said, we still want our hair to be clean. So when dreads are started, it is advisable to wash them every three to four days. When they mature, every two to three days. Unlike normal hair, the oils on the scalp don't filter into the dreads, it just stays on the scalp. So you'll really be rinsing your dreads and washing your scalp. So another way to prepare is get your hair used to only being washed every three days. It was a struggle with my hair (it went all itchy on the day before I needed to wash it), but I think it is finally getting used to it. Of course, that is just my hair. I have taken to rinsing showers where I don't get my hair wet. It may be March, but it feels like late spring/early summer out there, and I like being CLEAN.

So, hopefully my scalp is prepared.

Before dreading:
-Prepare scalp (check)
-Get stuff (check)
-Sectioning

Sectioning can be done at the dread party, right before the dreadlocks. It probably should be done (instead of opting for random pieces of hair) since that gives you control over how the dreads look and what size they are. Some people may want the crazy random look, but I am going for the neatest dreads possible. So sectioning. I want my hair sectioned into 3/4s inch squares (which Jonny Clean from DreadHeadHQ swears are PERFECT). I am planning to actually have a salon do this, and then just braid my hair out from my scalp. That will keep the hair in sections, and then I'll sleep on them that night, wash them the next day, and the waviness that the braids create could actually help making dreadlocks. And when my friends come, I'll just point at my head and be like, "We need to make this many."

So, biking to MasterCuts tomorrow to have them do it. I had lost my faith in MasterCuts (which is why my haircuts started costing $30 instead of $20, cause I changed salons), but 1) my husband is away with the car and 2) this should be simple enough they can't really mess it up. I mean, I'm not asking them to cut anything... *crosses fingers* I am also bringing a hat or bandanna to cover up a bunch of ridiculous-looking braids on my bike back. Then I'll have to go figure out snacks for my dread party.

And that is all the preparation I have. Other than trying to mentally prepare for when I see my relatives on Easter (in a week), or my Steampunk group the Saturday before Easter, or my small group this Sunday... Lots of ridicule potential.

Oh! The other thing to do to prepare. This is not a requirement, but advisable from DreadHeadHQ. Making a dread pact. The dread pact is promising that, barring all disaster, you will keep your dreads for one year. They should be mature by then and will give you a chance to really see what having dreads are like. It is meant to get you past some of the early months when they seem almost stuck looking bad and not making any progress and you just want to hang it all and comb them out. Well, if you promise you'll keep them for one year, gotta hang with it. That is another way of preparing. I will sign mine the day I put them in.