Maintenance!

Maintenance. That word makes me cringe. Like everyone else, when I first dreaded my hair many moons ago, I thought that dreads required no maintenance. How wrong I was. The less curly ("nappy" as it is sometimes call) your hair is, the harder it is for your hair to dread and stay dreaded. Same applies to if your hair is thin, silky or greasy by nature. These all slow down the dreading process. Nearly everyone will encounter these same problems that need close to constant maintenance:

• Loose/Un-dreaded roots
• Stray Hairs on scalp, hairline, and on dreads
• Unwanted conjoining of dreads at the roots
• Unraveling of dreads at the tips (what I call "paintbrush" dreads)

...The list goes on. These ones are very common though. They all can be solved simply with your hands or the all-powerful mini crochet hook. Don't give up on your dreads just yet. Here's how to solve these problems.

Loose/Un-dreaded roots
Hair will not naturally grow into dreads unless you are an african american. As your hair grows the roots will grow out straight and you'll end up with straight, normal hair with dreads on the end of it all. Many people leave this problem un-attended to. I do not know why. It looks terrible. The solution to this is likely the most simple of them all. Grab the dread at the root. If you can fit your finger through the root then there's room for improvement. If it is undreaded for several inches at the root then you've been slacking. Anyways, grab the dread at the root and simply rub it in a circular motion against the scalp. Do not physically SPIN the dread, just rotate the root as if you're drawing a tiny circle with a sharpie. You wouldn't spin the sharpie in your hand, would you? Do this for a few minutes. You can go clockwise or counter-clockwise. Some claim counter-clockwise is the way to do it, but it DOES NOT MATTER. You may not feel any difference but trust me, this will dread the roots.
I read somewhere that if you take the dread and weave it through itself at the root it will keep the roots tight. never...Ever..... EVER do this. I will provide pictures in the future of just how much that technique PERMANENTLY FUCKS UP your dreads.

Stray hairs
Stray hairs are the weeds of dreadlocks. It's your job to garden them out. They happen mostly on the hairline. This is due to your dreads naturally repositioning themselves and settling in the path of least resistance; like a river. They will also spring up in various places on the scalp (top of the head being the most common of spots), and along the dreads themselves. All of these can be pulled back into the dread with the..you guessed it.. the mini crochet hook. Like always you're just going to pierce it through the dread, hook onto the stray hairs, and pull them through the dread. Do this again and again from various angles until they're knotted into the dread. Don't pull too hard or hook already dreaded hairs as you pull the strays through.. you don't want to rip your dreads or stress the roots too much. Another method that tends to work relatively well is taking a hair tie (NOT a rubber band) and wrapping it around the dread a few times over at the base. It may get tangled in the dread, but since hair ties are coated in fabric it likely won't happen.


Unwanted conjoining

This doesn't happen to everyone, and it usually is a result of neglect, wearing a beanie hat too often, or having too much dirt/grime in your dreads. There are different degrees of this problem. It may be just a few hairs that have wandered to the wrong dread forming a small bridge, or two+ dreads may have fully formed into one mondo-dread. If they are only loosely conjoined then you simply just rip them apart. Don't rip your dreads off your head, just rip enough so that they separate. Yes, this is severing the hair, but it will only just mesh back into the designated dread so don't worry. If the dread is really thin, like the dread is the width of a pencil or smaller, then ripping them apart may sever the roots of the dread. If that is the case then you're best bet is to carefully perform surgery on the dread with a mini crochet hook and maybe some tiny scissors until it is back to normal. Or you could just let the little bugger conform into the other one until it's a thicker dread that forks into two. For the latter specified of this issue, when the dreads involuntarily form the crazy mondo-dread of doom, commonly called the BEAVER TAIL, there isn't much you can do.

If it's fully locked up as a big beaver tail then you've reached the point of no return with it. Either roll with it or just cut it off and start over with that spot. Don't worry too much about this happening to you know, it requires a LOT of neglect (like months) and dirt for it to form, and it will almost always form in the back (rat-tail location of scalp).

Unraveling of dreads

This will happen at the tip, and if not tended to will begin to spread up the dread. In the early stages of dreads this is something to look out for. If your dreads are more seasoned and have locked up more then it will not spread more then a few inches. I call these "Paintbrush" dreads because that's what they look like, a paintbrush (aren't I witty?). This can be solved with the mini crochet hook or by the palm-rolling technique. The best way to get your dreads to be dreaded down to the very end is to hook those hairs back in with the crochet hook and then palm roll the tip. It may take multiple sessions of this but it will work. I used to have this problem a lot when I first dreaded my hair. One thing I did was tie the dreads shut with dental floss. This worked, but in a weird way. It solved the problem of the paintbrush dread, but it made the dreads... pointy, I guess you could say. This could be your desired look, since most dreads end up knobby at the end, so you could use this method if that's what you're into. I got this idea from the method of using rubber bands on the tips. Rubber bands are mean to dreads. Since rubber is the sticky consistency that it is, rubber bands will get extremely tangled into the dreads. Trying to get them out is really hard. Don't use rubber bands for anything with dreads.

(^you may feel like doing this at times, maintenance can be tedious)