LOC - Liquid - Oil - Cream. This leave-in method is quite popular amongst curlies and wavies as far as I know, and though it seems like a styling method, it can also be used by those of us who don't wear our hair loose. It makes the hair soft, shiny, and easy to manage. The LOC-thread on LHC has a lot more information, and many success stories too, including mine. I decided to try it out a few weeks or so ago, and I can only say that I'm amazed by the results I've gotten. I have very dry hair, and it has always been difficult to make it soft and properly moisturized. Leave-in conditioners helped a bit, but not enough, Panacea/salve did make it soft and nice, but I had to apply it every day to keep up the effect. The result was that my hair became a lint & dust magnet, which meant more tangles.
I was skeptical to trying LOC and I put it off for a long while, mainly because putting oil on wet hair has always given me stringy, icky hair. I decided to do my own little twist on it, as many in the LOC-thread has done too, and I mixed the oil and cream before applying. I used First Price conditioner as leave-in, Nightblooming's Triple Moon Hair Anointing Oil as oil (duh!) and Nightblooming's Freya Salve as cream. Here's what I did:
-Wash and condition hair as usual, squeeze out excess water, and apply coney leave-in conditioner.
-Gently wrap a towel around the hair and let it towel dry while I get dressed.
- Remove towel and put all hair over either right or left shoulder. Carefully separate the biggest clumps.
- Scrape up a small amount of Freya salve and put it in my hand. Add 3-4 drops of Triple Moon oil, and rub palms together for a bit. Stroke hands all over the hair, even above the ears, but mainly on the length and ends. Then let it airdry.
This method makes my hair incredibly soft and shiny, and so easy brush with my TT. I don't have to put any panacea/salve on it after it has dried, it actually stays soft and wonderful until next wash day. It's pretty amazing. I've only tried it with Freya salve and Triple Moon oil, but I'm interested to try the other salves too, and Khadi Amla Oil.
I don't write much about the products I put on my hair. I recently updated the Haircare section a bit, but I think that's all. The main reason for not writing about haircare, is that my routine is terribly unexciting. I don't experiment with new products and oils, never do deep treatments, never do anything special. I've found shampoos and conditioners that work for me, and I'm sticking with them. I was more adventurous when I first joined LHC and started learning about haircare. I tried conditioner-only washing (disaster!), and shampoo bars, which I used for a year or so. I stopped in January (or maybe it was February) this year, for a bunch of reason that I may write about on some other occasion. I successfully transitioned back to SLS/SLES shampoos, and I'm very happy about it.
Shampoo:
I have two shampoos that I really like, both are called Change. The purple one is for normal and fine hair, and the other is for dry and damaged hair. My hair fits in the latter category, but both shampoos work really well. They don't dry my scalp out like many other shampoos do, so I don't get flakies after using them.
Conditioner:
I use the cheapest conditioners I find, and they actually work really well for me. I condition my hair twice when I wash, first with a cone-free one, and then with a mix of cone-free and coney conditioner. For cone-free, I use SoftStyle (find them at Rema1000) and Xtra (find them in the Coop stores). For coney, I use FirstPrice. I also use this one as my leave-in conditioner.
How I wash:
I start by making my shampoo mixture in a small pump bottle. I use a bit of shampoo, 3 drops of Nightblooming's Triple Moon Hair Anointing Oil, and enough water to make it fairly runny. I never fill the entire bottle, that would be way too much.
I always detangle my hair before I get in the shower, because wet detangling doesn't work for me. I also oil my scalp with either Triple Moon Anointing Oil or Khadi Amla Oil before washing. I leave it on for at least 30 minutes, sometimes overnight.
First I wash my scalp with the shampoo dilution. I put a few pumps all over my head, lather a bit, and then rinse out. Then I apply cone-free conditioner to the length of my hair, and put the remaining shampoo mix on my head. Lather and rinse. I then apply cone-free conditioner on my length again, and let it sit for a minute or so before applying coney conditioner on top of it. Let it sit for a few minutes, and then rinse thoroughly.
And that's it. I put leave-in on afterwards, but I'll write about that in a different post.
