Colour Fatigue??

I remember 'choosing' the colour of my locks was quite an ordeal. I spent a lot of time on lock blogs inspecting different colour effects... there were days I was convinced I wanted my own natural Colour 4 all the way... but there was something mesmerizing about coloured sisterlocks... I had a folder full of locks with highlights, multi-tones, dyed ends...and I emailed poor Gerry a couple of times changing my mind on the colour combination each time :)

The dark-brown and honey-something on the ends is 'mating' quite beautifully. You can't see this from the pics but there are traces of the darker colour all the way to the end. In fact I mixed 3 colours…towards the scalp is my own hair colour for a couple of inches…then a slightly lighter shade of brown with the darker shade...then a stronger mix of the light honey-something-something colour. It's all lovely really, it suits my skin tone and I totally love the effect :) As I mentioned before, the colour & the texture of the gerrylocs not only looks natural,...it feels soft and natural...and sometimes I even forget I have extensions in my hair. For this I'm truly grateful, I had natural hair since 2005 (an Afro for 2 years...then traditional locks) and in that time I really learned to love my hair and marvel at it's natural texture and softness.

Oh, by the way (off a tangent she goes!!) in the 2 and bit years I had a natural afro; I was in touch with a sisterlocks consultant in the US. I was going to club-in (slang word? Hope you get the idea) with a few friends and ‘import’ her to South Africa to come install our sisterlocks, show us how to maintain...etc. In the end, some people fell out and I had other financial constraints so as much as I loved sisterlocks, I couldn't justify spending so much on hair. I had to literally forbid myself from googling sisterlocks and after a couple months of 'mourning'...I eventually went to a solon and twisted my hair into traditional locks.

In retrospect, maybe I should have kept natural hair till I could have sisterlocks...but on the same breath, growing my own locks was truly a journey of self-love. The traditional SDA churches here in South Africa are not really big fans of traditional locks (locks in general!!), and in the professional consulting world, locks were also not considered 'neat and professional'...and socially, my friends were not exactly jumping up-n-down with my decision to lock. In all that, I stuck it out and nothing could dampen my spirit about my locks…'NOT the Rasta comments in church…nor the snide remarks in the office...not the frowns I got from certain family members...NOTHING!!!

Winding back to today's topic, I guess this is partly why I sometimes feel fatigued by this lovely color I have in my hair. As beautiful as it looks, in my soul it really feels unnatural at times. This probably sounds rich coming from someone who has lock extensions, and I don't even understand it myself. Having embraced natural hair for a good five years, I was expecting more of an internal struggle with the extensions rather than the colour. Thankfully I don't feel like this all the time. Most days, I'm really happy with my hair, extension, size, colour & all!! I also keep telling myself that when my hair grows and I start trimming off the extensions, the coloured bits will be the first to go. Who knows? Maybe then I'll be a fully-fledged colour junkie :) in which case, please don't hold today's blog against me :) :)

I also hope my 'craving' for sisterlocks has been finally cured...I've read some blogs of people who had wonderful microlocks/sisterlocks but who undid their locks because they were not satisfied with the grid/size etc. Ok...the lock-count seems to be a big thing as well! Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging anyone, it is just very time consuming to grow locks and I hope I'll be happy with this journey this time round...

Overall...colour fatigue and all, I love my hair.