My Try Again Twist-Out

I am finally getting to the point where I can have a decent twist-out. When I was transitioning, I was so excited about cutting off my relaxed ends so I could do one of those pretty twist-outs I always saw everyone on YouTube doing. I went natural in September of 2010 and I did my BC in February of 2011. And I tried the twist-out only to have it fail. One of the problems is that the shorter your hair, the smaller the twists need to be. But that I could deal with. What I couldn’t deal with were the ends of my hair that still seemed to be straight. Originally, I attributed this to the heat I had used while transitioning so I decided I would table the twist-out issue until my hair was longer and I could get a trim without sacrificing so much length. I didn’t have much at that point to work with.

At least that was the original thought. It wasn’t long before I took some scissors to the top part of my head hoping to do away with the strightees. No luck. The top of my head grows hair that is much looser in curl, so loose that some of it will not lock in when setting a twist. The ends just kind stick out and threaten to unravel at any moment. No amount gel keeps it locked.

So, fast forward a few months. I have some length now and I’m still determined to get a good twist-out. The flat twist has become my setting style of choice because of my looser curls, but I do love the look of the twist-out. Recently I met Chai of Back to Curly and immediately fell in love with her twist out. Her hair is much, much longer than mine, but it inspired me to give it another try. So, I did.

I started with freshly washed hair and set it using a cheap but good styling creme (more on products in future posts). I used smallish twists to discourage the unraveling, but let me show you what I ended up with.

The twists on one side of my head curl on to themselves perfectly, giving me a nice little spiral action at the end of each twist. The other side has twists that seem to be barely hanging together and just loosely stick. But my determination won out and I ended up with a very pretty twist-out. As you can see from the first picture, I styled it the first day with my top pinned back to mask my straighter ends. I was afraid they would become a frizzy mess by the end of the day.

That night, I reset my twists dry and put a little styling creme on the ends to seal them up. This is the day 2 hair.

It was cute, but not exactly what I wanted. That night (last night actually), I reset them by spraying a little water/conditioner mix on the hair and then sealing the ends with the styling creme. Much better results.

So, thank you Chai for the inspiration to try again. The twist- out and I have now made peace and although I still have a looser curl pattern in the top to contend with, I am loving the results. Natural hair is all about trial and error. You can’t give up. Sometimes you just need to walk away and try again later.

Why You Should Use Twitter At Your Next Conference

Prior to the Blogalicious 2011 conference, I had not used Twitter since February 2010! Since I love technology, I had kept up with the Twitter news and I know how Twitter was being used for news sharing and celebrity misconduct, but Twitter’s practicality in my life had shown itself to be rather limited. Enter the world of Blogalicious and everything changed. At the start of the conference we were given the hash tag established for the event (#blogalicious11).

I ignored the request for a little while until someone at my table started commenting about something she had just read in the twitter feed. It piqued my interest enough that I thought I should at least give it a glance. Lucky for me, my computer remembered my twitter handle and password. And then I remembered one of the reasons I am not a big twitter user. The twitter website is not the most usable site out there. So, I downloaded Tweetdeck, set up a column to follow the conference has tag and I was on my way.

It wasn’t long before I started to see the value of using twitter during this conference.

        ❑        Build Enthusiasm. Past conference attendees were tweeting about how excited they were to see each other again. New attendees were tweeting about what they were hoping to learn. Some were tweeting of their anticipation as they waited to get off the plane or waiting for the taxi to at least move another five feet so they could feel they were getting closer. Everyone was buzzing and the buzz was contagious.

        ❑        Run Contests. Want to give away copies of your book, a cell phone, a new line of products? Encourage attendees to use your own hashtag and gain much needed buzz among conference attendees and the twitter-verse at large. Win, win all around.

        ❑        Get content from sessions you were not able to attend. What do you do when the session on writing a great pitch is held at the same time as the session on creating kick-ass content? Just pick one and use the tweet stream to gain information from the session you couldn’t attend. You don’t get the full impact but you definitely don’t loose out completely.

        ❑        Share notes. In sessions where so much information is flowing, it is easy to miss something. Wait a few seconds and someone in the room will tweet what you missed. No need to interrupt the presenters asking them to repeat content. The Twitter-verse has you covered.

        ❑        Virtual Lost & Found. We all loose things. It’s inevitable. What better way to let technologically savvy people know they lost something than through a tweet? But that goes the other way as well. I remember seeing tweets from an attendee that managed to hold on to her computer but not her cell phone. A few tweets and she was soon reunited with her lost lifeline.

        ❑        Make contacts. With 300+ attendees, there was no way to make rounds and meet everyone. Did I mention that I’m actually quite a shy person. While it is not common for me to walk up to a stranger and say hello, I was comfortable responding to someone’s tweet and letting that serve as the introduction that would push me into making a real life contact. Don’t forget, everyone attending these conferences are not as outgoing as you would think.

        ❑        Organize side gatherings. Cocktails, impromptu book signings, swag swaps, etc. There were so many things going on, no one could ever get bored or lonely at this conference.

How do you use Twitter at your conferences? Do you find it useful or a distraction?

Sometimes You Just Need to Dance

Even though my fiancé and I are 19 years apart, there is one thing that we share that is very important to me. Our love for music and thank God that we actually have similar tastes. My vast music collection has always served as bit of a litmus test in my relationships. Even most of my friends give me strange looks at the selections that pop up on my shuffled playlist. I could be listening to anything from Michael Jackson to Mahalia Jackson to Snow Patrol to Darius Rucker (pre and post country), all in one sitting. I’m a very eclectic girl and my music collection reflects this with every press of the play button. I may have even lost out on a few dates after disclosing my love of country or classical music. Yo Yo Ma and Esperanza Spalding make my skin crawl in such a good way!

So, it was no surprise that I would cringe at the idea of our first 10 hour road trip together. I just knew he would look at me with that same weird look that others before had given me. But to my surprise, he loved song after song after song. He fell in love with Snow Patrol and affectionally refers to them as “Snow Ball”. The documentary, Thundersoul, was shown during the Blogalicious 2011 conference and I immediately fell in love with the music. It didn’t take me long to download three of the albums and play it for my honey. Of course he would love it. This was the music of his childhood! We had such a great time dancing in our small apartment, sharing what I now consider to be one of our great memories.

And all of this is on my mind because we are in the car, driving to our second marriage counseling session. Our homework was to make sure we shared one activity a week for the month between our sessions. Dancing around in our apartment was such a simple activity to share, but it sure was special to me.

Yay!