I finally cut back to knee!

[Lunnafindel]

I did it! after almost 3 years of working up the courage, I finally cut my hair back to knee, achieving a LHC-long dream of successfully thickening my hemline!

I know this is the opposite direction from most people, but I just want some congratulations here, because I'm really proud of myself. It take a lot to make me want to cut my hair (there's some connection there to having super-long hair, I can't think what...), and I've been trying to do it for two and a half years now, both because I always wanted a thicker hemline, and because ankle-length hair was a huge pain. It tangled more than usual, and since my hair was significantly longer than my arms it was much more difficult to untangle (same goes for back-braiding), I stepped on it, I had to be careful not to let it get down the drain while I was showering, I had to wrap it around my neck to finish a braid, I even had to wrap it around my neck to go to the bathroom since flipping it over my shoulder wasn't good enough (it'd just drag on the ground next to the toilet which is just as gross :blueeek:). ...But I couldn't just CUT it! I was so close to the floor! I couldn't just stop before reaching another milestone I never knew I wanted to reach...

Last year (after 2 years of dithering about it) I decided that was that: I was going to force myself to cut my hair by dyeing the last 12 inches blue, so that when the color faded and it started looking terrible, I'd be forced to cut it. Unfortunately, I LOVED the blue color, and it never faded, so my strategy backfired - I wanted even less to cut it, deciding I'd just wait till it finally hit the floor. But strangely, even after 2 years at ankle, my hair never gained those last 2-3 inches to reach the floor. I decided, in the end, that this must be terminal, and I had no more reason to wait. (it's not like I wanted my hair dragging on the floor anyway, the goal was purely for the novelty of it)

So THIS year (yesterday, to be precise) I finally did it, and it feels FANTASTIC. My hair just slides through my fingers, tangle-free, it takes way less time to braid, and best of all, my hemline is fuller than it's ever been in my entire life! All my life my hair has been thin at the end, when I was younger because I didn't treat it very well, and then after I found LHC because I stopped trimming it so it basically always looked like it was at terminal. When I first joined LHC I thought, "wow, it'd be nice to have a thick hemline like some of those women" but then I thought about how long that would take and gave up then and there. But it turns out my LHC-changed ways have paid off, and my braid looks completely different than it ever has before. I feel like a whole new person! This must be what it's like when people cut their hair...I've never tried it before!

Want pictures?
This is the before picture:
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4338/35789807953_dcf0ca1e68.jpg

and this is the after picture:
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4389/35789806123_d415cc848e.jpg

Close-ups:
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4414/35789809233_91e3c33206.jpg https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4437/35790342233_fe907d129d.jpg


And here's the change in braid tassels:
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4354/36430611602_360838cb6a.jpg https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4371/36202811180_09a64d67f8.jpg
isn't that amazing?!? :cheese:


This is what I cut off. I hadn't realized it, but that's actually a really long distance from knee to ankle!
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4384/35789804523_3fd18206b2.jpg

Anyway, I'm sure I'll miss having my hair swishing around my ankles, and having the longest hair I can achieve (knee feels so short now, after years of ankle! so conventional!), but for now, I'll enjoy it being so tangle-free and thick at the bottom, and and so easy to manage. I love it!

[animetor7]

Congratulations!! I'm glad you're enjoying your hair again. And don't worry, knee length is still super long as well. :) The only thing I'd say is if you loved the blue so much maybe add some more in to your new ends. But in the meantime, good for you!! :flower:

[Jo Ann]

Congratulations, Lunnafindel! I'm so happy your happy with your hair again! I mean, losing a FOOT of length and being happy about it? :thudpile:

Your story gives shorties like me hope! :p

[Aunt Rapunzel]

Congratulations! It looks lovely!

[Reyn127]

Wowzers! Your hair looks (and looked) great. Your braid tassle looks so nice and neat now though, that must be an awesome feeling!

[JadedByEntropy]

Thats not even knee, its calf! Wow! I did a similar 12" chop last summer to bcl. I've never made it to knee. I'm in awe you remained so long at ankle! Congratulations on the new thicker hemline! Thats so much fun! I vote keep the blue in the bottom. Why not? :) I remember when you put it in. So happy you're happy with the big change..that takes a lot of courage!

[lithostoic]

Yay it looks nice!

[Kellylee]

It looks beautiful! My hair isn't nearly as long as yours but I did the same thing last year. It was so worth it. Now maybe it will get longer than before! I think you made a great choice and in sure you'll be happy with it in the long run. 😁

[Corvana]

It looks wonderful!! I'm glad you're happy with it, that's the most important thing!

[Sarahlabyrinth]

That does look wonderful, well done, you! I bet having thicker ends feels wonderful. And that looks like calf length to me :)

[Crystawni]

Ha! You get to keep the blue after all! :D Your hair looks great, thick, shiny and lush--and still really looooooooooong. I'm so happy for you that you get to enjoy it more now. And the cutoff reminds me of a toy we had as kids that was attached to fishing line to make it slither and jump around "on its own". :p

[pailin]

It's beautiful, Lunnafindel! I'm glad you're happy with the cut, and hope you get to enjoy your hair so much more!

[Kake]

Looks great, glad you have found your happy length. It doesn't look like a huge difference in the comparison photos (lengthwise), but obviously it is when you see the actual length photo.
Well done, you've been very brave. :)

[TatsuOni]

Congrats! Your hair looks beautiful and it's great that you now have a lenght that you truly enjoy :)

[lapushka]

12-13 inches is a long piece of hair to lose. :( I'm just glad you're happy with the results. The blue was a nice touch, I reckon and maybe you can do it again. You've got a nice thick hemline now and that's what matters. Your braid looks great too. :D

Good luck with your "new" hair. :D :thumbsup:

[pandabarrier]

Your hair looks great after the trim, and I agree with others, it's calf length!

[missbexy]

Congratulations! It must be strange but don't worry, I still wouldn't say you're length is conventional :P That braid looks beautiful, enjoy your new length.

[embee]

Wow! I just don't know what to say, it's so ... the opposite direction from my goal. Your hair looks great and it's wonderful that you're happy with it. Enjoy enjoy enjoy! :)

[Alissalocks]

It looks fabulous and enjoying your hair even more (all over again) is such a gift. Your story gives me hope that someday I might see such extraordinary lengths, and if not? It's ok to trim back for a stronger hemline too. :cheer:

[vpatt]

Wow, it's beautiful and I'm so glad you love it!

[Borgessa]

Congrats. Nice to see someone so excited. Looks great.

[Garnetgem]

Gosh its now a whole lot thicker looking..i can understand its taken time to go ahead with it,i only need a tiny microtrim at the ends but putting it off for a year now!

nice to know your enjoying your hair so much.. :)

[katydid317]

Wow your hair is so beautiful! It is still super long, I would call that calf length as well. It looks so healthy too!

[Joyful Mystery]

Wow, beautiful! I'm so glad you're happy with it and can enjoy it again.

[Lunnafindel]

Thank you so much everyone! It's great to have this community who all understand how hard it is to cut hair - everyone in my "real" life thinks I'm silly for putting it off for so long and thinking it's a big deal. Thanks for the support :D


Ha! You get to keep the blue after all! :D Your hair looks great, thick, shiny and lush--and still really looooooooooong. I'm so happy for you that you get to enjoy it more now. And the cutoff reminds me of a toy we had as kids that was attached to fishing line to make it slither and jump around "on its own". :p

Yes! I always used to use my braid as a cat toy (maybe that was the cause of some of the damage, now that I think of it), the kittens loved it! But now I think my braid is too thick for them to be interested in, which is a good thing, because I'm going to try to be nicer to my ends now and not introduce my hair to kitty teeth anymore...

And to those of you who are going for ankle or beyond and disagree with cutting but were nice about my chop anyway, thanks ESPECIALLY to you. I agree in my heart that longer is better, and there's nothing so amazing as feeling your hair swish around your feet. I support growing to terminal too!

For the blue advocates, I do plan on redyeing, but I'm thinking maybe this time I'll do a streak down the underside of my hair, something that's hideable but would pop out in a braid. I'll give myself another month or two to enjoy what I have now before doing anything else drastic. But it's definitely on the docket! :D

[meteor]

Congratulations, Lunnafindel! It looks gorgeous! I'm so happy to hear you are enjoying the new length a lot more! Your hair is super-inspirational! :bowtome: Looks gorgeous at any length! :applause

[bparnell75]

Luna, I really enjoyed reading your posts o this subject. I am just above classic and my ends are like yours were. It is wonderful for length to make buns, but I think it is time to at least micro trim.

[mira-chan]

Congratulations! I remember when you first dyed it. You were talking about this for a while. I totally understand taking that long too. I was stuck in between classic and fingertip with thin ends for years before I trimmed back too.

[littlestarface]

Much better without the blue! i'm glad you made this decision.

[Eastbound&Down]

Congrats! It looks fantastic! Cutting can be very nerve-wracking, so I totally feel where you are coming from! Enjoy your knee length tresses!!

[AspenSong]

Nice job! It looks beautiful - before and after! But I totally get wanting to thicken the hemline and it does look fantastic now! I'm kind of doing the same thing right now. Seeing how long I can get before I can make myself cut back to thicken my hem. It's definitely a hard choice!

[Dark40]

Congratulations! Your hair looks gorgeous! I also love a thicker hemline too!

[Ondine11]

Congratulations! Your hair is still super-long, but the new hemline is beautiful It will make your hair look healthier & fuller overall. Plus, if it feels too short, you can always just let it grow again.

[spidermom]

Congrats and well done! Your ends look fabulous.

[CindyOfTheOaks]

Just beautiful !

[Lunnafindel]

Luna, I really enjoyed reading your posts o this subject. I am just above classic and my ends are like yours were. It is wonderful for length to make buns, but I think it is time to at least micro trim.

Well from my experience it's worth the trim :) And fortunately, all your hairtoys still work :D


Congratulations! I remember when you first dyed it. You were talking about this for a while. I totally understand taking that long too. I was stuck in between classic and fingertip with thin ends for years before I trimmed back too.

Yeah, I was so sure that would get me to cut it...all it did was get me to want to dye my hair more :)


Congratulations! Your hair is still super-long, but the new hemline is beautiful It will make your hair look healthier & fuller overall. Plus, if it feels too short, you can always just let it grow again.

Thanks! And I think now that I'm an adult 3-5 years doesn't feel like as long as it used to - I could totally do it again!

[pili]

Your hair is still so amazingly long! And now the hemline looks so much fuller. I agree with others, though, that's calf not knee!

[floridaorchid]

Congratulations on the thicker hem line! You seem much happier now, and I do have to agree that your new braid tassel is amazing! :heart:
I also agree with everyone else that the blue was really awesome, maybe whenever you feel comfortable you can experiment with it again? Don't worry too much, I'm sure you'll get back to ankle length! :)

[cathair]

Well done for making a decision. That can't have been easy, it must have been the right time :) What a tremendous improvement in the end of your braid! Not that your hair wasn't beautiful before.

Looking forward to seeing your next adventures with blue dye :D

[Dendra]

Congrats, your hair looks beautiful!

I absolutely love the feeling of fresh ends after a trim, so I feel your joy :)

[Lunnafindel]

Thanks again, everyone! I can't stop playing with my braid now, it feels like someone else's hair...

And it's true. i erred on the side of calf-length rather than knee because knee can be a very amorphous area (what's knee? top of knee? bottom? bottom of "knee-length" skirt?) and my hair poofs up when it's drier so I wanted it to be knee when dry as well. I just checked, and it officially is - yay!

[Xan]

I did it! after almost 3 years of working up the courage, I finally cut my hair back to knee, achieving a LHC-long dream of successfully thickening my hemline!

I know this is the opposite direction from most people, but I just want some congratulations here, because I'm really proud of myself. It take a lot to make me want to cut my hair (there's some connection there to having super-long hair, I can't think what...), and I've been trying to do it for two and a half years now, both because I always wanted a thicker hemline, and because ankle-length hair was a huge pain. It tangled more than usual, and since my hair was significantly longer than my arms it was much more difficult to untangle (same goes for back-braiding), I stepped on it, I had to be careful not to let it get down the drain while I was showering, I had to wrap it around my neck to finish a braid, I even had to wrap it around my neck to go to the bathroom since flipping it over my shoulder wasn't good enough (it'd just drag on the ground next to the toilet which is just as gross :blueeek:). ...But I couldn't just CUT it! I was so close to the floor! I couldn't just stop before reaching another milestone I never knew I wanted to reach...

Last year (after 2 years of dithering about it) I decided that was that: I was going to force myself to cut my hair by dyeing the last 12 inches blue, so that when the color faded and it started looking terrible, I'd be forced to cut it. Unfortunately, I LOVED the blue color, and it never faded, so my strategy backfired - I wanted even less to cut it, deciding I'd just wait till it finally hit the floor. But strangely, even after 2 years at ankle, my hair never gained those last 2-3 inches to reach the floor. I decided, in the end, that this must be terminal, and I had no more reason to wait. (it's not like I wanted my hair dragging on the floor anyway, the goal was purely for the novelty of it)

So THIS year (yesterday, to be precise) I finally did it, and it feels FANTASTIC. My hair just slides through my fingers, tangle-free, it takes way less time to braid, and best of all, my hemline is fuller than it's ever been in my entire life! All my life my hair has been thin at the end, when I was younger because I didn't treat it very well, and then after I found LHC because I stopped trimming it so it basically always looked like it was at terminal. When I first joined LHC I thought, "wow, it'd be nice to have a thick hemline like some of those women" but then I thought about how long that would take and gave up then and there. But it turns out my LHC-changed ways have paid off, and my braid looks completely different than it ever has before. I feel like a whole new person! This must be what it's like when people cut their hair...I've never tried it before!

Want pictures?
This is the before picture:
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4338/35789807953_dcf0ca1e68.jpg

and this is the after picture:
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4389/35789806123_d415cc848e.jpg

Close-ups:
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4414/35789809233_91e3c33206.jpg https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4437/35790342233_fe907d129d.jpg


And here's the change in braid tassels:
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4354/36430611602_360838cb6a.jpg https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4371/36202811180_09a64d67f8.jpg
isn't that amazing?!? :cheese:


This is what I cut off. I hadn't realized it, but that's actually a really long distance from knee to ankle!
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4384/35789804523_3fd18206b2.jpg

Anyway, I'm sure I'll miss having my hair swishing around my ankles, and having the longest hair I can achieve (knee feels so short now, after years of ankle! so conventional!), but for now, I'll enjoy it being so tangle-free and thick at the bottom, and and so easy to manage. I love it!
Still super gorgeous and if you want ankle to floor again it will be thicker ends so I think the trim was a win win, but you are getting me thinking to aim to knee+ darn you guys with the super awesome hair.

[Kat-Rinnè Naido]

Congratulations. Enjoy your new length. :toast:

[_fred_]

Congratulations, Lunnafindel, that sounds like a heck of a step to have taken, and your hair looks wonderful for it :blossom:

[Beatnik Guy]

That's awesome! Glad you are happy with your new length. :D

[marvel-lover]

How pretty! I'm glad you are happy with your ends now; they look very thick and lovely

[FloC]

I'm so glad I have revisited this forum after a long time. I have hair just below my behind and the end of my braid looks just like yours did. Thank you for proving to me that it really will be worth my taking the plunge and having a few inches off (gulp!)

[Vanilla]

Congrats! I know you were waiting to cut back to knee. It looks great!

[Lunnafindel]

Congrats! I know you were waiting to cut back to knee. It looks great!

Thanks! I'll join you in the dip-dyed club again soon ;)

Update: I just did a super-complex zigzag braid and it's SO much easier now with shorter, tangle free hair! Hooray, this is going to be so fun!

[DaveDecker]

lunnafindel - it looks great! (I did similar nearly 3 years ago). Thanks for sharing your story with us. :)

[shelly123]

Looks very pretty. I think you made a good choice :)

[dellad]

Lunnafindel, I've been so absent from the boards that I completely missed your big cut. Congratulations! Your hair, before and after, looks utterly thud worthy! Can't wait to see more pictures.

[CreatureBailey]

It looks awesome congrats you must be so happy I hope one day my hair will be like yours ^_^

[spidermom]

Beautiful result! You deserve to feel proud.

[Arciela]

beautiful hair and length! congrats on doing this!! yay :flower:

[languagenut]

Calf-length, knee-length, I'm no judge of such things, but whatever it is, it's still amazingly long, not to mention beautiful! :thud: Enjoy your nice fresh ends! :)

[Lunnafindel]

Wow thanks everyone! (dellad, I was going for your look when I did it, and I think I achieved it :) )

Update: Turns out, after wanting a blunt hemline for years, it's actually kind of a pain. It doesn't stay in buns nearly as easily and my braids don't hold together on their own like they used to - they just unravel. So now I'm patiently waiting (or considering strategic trimming) for fairytale ends again. Sigh. The grass is always greener, am i right?

[Yozhik]

Lunnafindel, I've been away from the boards for ages, but also just happened to stumble upon this post: congrats on your cut! Your hair looks gorgeous, as always!
It was so nice to meet you (what was it, 4 years ago?!) and to hang out in person! :heart:

[Waveurly]

Wow I love your hair length! It's good that you're happy with your hair but I also want to congratulate you for growing it to such lengths! Makes me want to rethink my goal length ;)

[Lunnafindel]

Goal lengths are made to be rethought :p

And Yozhik, nice to see you again! That meet was the first one I actually considered a past-knee goal length, so this is the natural end to that beginning :)

[dellad]

Wow thanks everyone! (dellad, I was going for your look when I did it, and I think I achieved it :) )


My goodness, I'm flattered! Seriously, that's the best hair compliment ever, thank you! And yes, my ends do also constantly poke out of my buns.

[Saige]

Your hair is absolutely gorgeous, before and after the cut! I'm happy you're enjoying your hair more now. I hope you have lots of fun with it :)

[Gaelic Girl]

Congratulations!! It's looks terrific and so healthy! Do what you enjoy..it's your hair. :cheer::cheer::cheer:

[Groovy Granny]

Congratulations!! It's looks terrific and so healthy! Do what you enjoy..it's your hair. :cheer::cheer::cheer:

I missed this thread when I was away....

Agreed :agree: It is beautiful ......and always best to go with your gut when it comes to how you wear your hear :thumbsup: