All loc'd up!

Okay, so the day finally came and has gone. I'm on day two of my dreadlocked hair.

Twenty-four hours ago, I arrived at Dreadmonkey and met Jamie, the man himself, in person after a month of emails and texts about the process, and as I was running late due to the usual Network Rail shenanigans, we immediately got down to business.

Jamie began working on my hair, while I alternated between chatting his ears off, watching Doctor Who reruns, and crocheting myself a hat (no! not just in case I didn't like how things turned out, as my daughter suggested. Cheeky miss.) It was to help pass the time, because a full head of new dreads can take all day -- mine took about 7 hours.

This is the man himself...

This is the crochet hook that did the job...

This was the process...

And these are my new babies after a good night's sleep....

So now I have about 70 baby locs. I just did a quick count, nothing definitive.

I had thought I'd have only about 40-50 locs, a bit thicker than they appear now (more on appearance vs reality below and in future posts), but I trust Jamie, who took a look at my hair and used his best judgement to give me the size locs that would eventually give me the look I was after.

Also, as I said in a previous post, you can long after a certain look or someone else's locs all you want, but your hair gives you the locs it gives you. This is what my hair gave to me -- and I'm thrilled.

Here's a comparison of one of Jamie's former clients from his online gallery, showing her before, during, immediately after, and after some time, juxtaposed with me from yesterday, so you can see how things change and develop over time:

As you can see, on day one baby locs don't look much like they will when they grow up. It'll take a couple days for them settle down -- by which I mean not stick out at random angles (which my kids find incredibly funny).

A couple weeks and a couple washes for them to start to do their natural frizz thang and puff up a bit.

A couple of months before the roots grow out and I need to go for some maintenance to make sure they don't just go their own way, but rather join up with the already loc'd length of the hair and continue on their adolescent journey.

And a couple of years before I can look up and say, the babies have all grown up.

So, in a very real sense, this journey is only just beginning.