In Response to Southern Girl...

What? My words of wisdom aren't enough for you???

Pictures? You need pictures?!?

Hmph!

(JK) Southern Girl called me out because I just put up two posts after a three month absence and I have no pictures.

Y'all know I was never the best at posting pictures in timely fashion - words I have in abundance... Pictures, not so much... and that is precisely why I haven't posted in soooo long.

I have about 12 posts sitting in draft right now and most of them require pictorial accompaniment but I haven't had time to take pictures or upload the ones I have taken.

Plus, when I started my business I bought a new laptop, a new camera, and a new phone.

So I've had a huge learning curve on all this new stuff and some pics are on my desktop, some pics are on my phone, some pics are on one laptop, some pics are on the other.

I was pretty slack on posting pictures anyway, but now I am especially challenged and I have less time to boot!

Like Southern Girl, my smallest locks are also at the crown. I had them installed that way for fullness too. I refer to that area affectionately as 'the thicket'.

In the beginning it was my least favorite area to retighten. It was most prone to tangling and married locks, which I refer to (and not affectionately) as unholy unions.

However, once I realized that there was no reason I had to wait 4 weeks or 6 weeks or any set amount of time to retighten, everything changed.

I retighten that area as needed. That means very often. That area - the thicket - probably accounts for about a third of my locks - so we're talking about 100 or so. I retighten 5 to 10 locks every 2 - 3 days. Sometimes I'll go in and do all of them, then I won't need to go back again for 2 - 3 weeks.

But my hair grows fast enough that I do have enough growth in that time to merit another tightening. In fact, I really need to do it that often to stay on top of it.

Unlike my consultant, I can't see what I'm doing and I have to work entirely by feel and I don't really like bothering with clips, so I never separate my parts properly. I also rely on feel to make sure I'm staying within the established grid pattern.

So it is especially important that I don't let the thicket get out of hand. I try to keep the passes with the tool to a minimum: 3 - 4 (and sometimes 6) loops through the base of the lock as opposed to the 6 - 10 I would face at 6 weeks.

Yep...more words and still no pictures.