I use storebought gel and I just sort of smush it around with an equal amount of oil in my hands and then wipe it into my hair, especially my ends. The tricky thing with aloe is that it's a humectant and if the air is too dry it could suck the moisture out of your hair and into the air. Aloe plants have that barrier of the outside of the leaf to help prevent that from happening. On the other hand, a layer of oil could work similarly as a barrier.
If I could keep track of all the different scarf threads I might flag them for a mod to merge, but gosh that's a job and a half to find them all.
Hair velcroing into scarves sounds less than pleasant! I don't think I've had that, but my hair is a little bit less curly than yours. A tighter weave underscarf does sound like a good idea to combat that. A few years back I was introduced to wearing a velvet stretch headband under scarves and I've never looked back, it's so much better for my hair and for keeping scarves of all textures on. It's also really gentle on the hairline hairs.
We are truly super-dry out here--the first thing most people do when visiting is get a nosebleed and slough off three layers of skin! But if the oil treatment still feels this heavy after the next repetition I'll definitely try the aloe vera method.
I think I've done three different searches and found about fifteen different threads so far ; )
Yeah, it doesn't help that my hair is curliest when it's shortest, so those baby hairs are both thin and extra-sproingy. Lots of people have recommended the velvet headbands from Wrapunzel to me for "structural integrity of headscarf" reasons. Is that the type you use? If you've found it's kind to your hair I'll probably bite the bullet and order one. . .
I have a super cheap one (currency conversion tells me it's about 5usd) from a local scarf shop that's probably hand made by someone. Mine just has a piece of elastic in the back rather than any adjustable closures. I used to have one that had a velcro closure in back, but, well, you can imagine how happy that velcro made both my hair and my scarves. Not very. I see Wrapunzel now has one without velcro also! I think it's essentially the same thing as what I have. Bear in mind that what my hair likes, yours may not, but if you're wearing scarves every or nearly every day, I find it almost indispensable.
Sounds like a plan! I can sew, but I just didn't want to bother. I'd also have to find stretch velvet that isn't crushed, so that the nap is all going in one direction. My original velcro ones were literally a long rectangle of stretch velvet folded in half and overlocked, with patches of velcro sewed to the ends. My elastic no velcro ones are the same except they're now made a little bit tapered in the back to come down to the width of the elastic. I can also take pictures of mine if that would help.
A photo or two would be very helpful, thanks! I take it the elastic is fully enclosed in the fabric, like a waistband? It would also be great if you could estimate about how wide the strip of elastic is--I think the only elastic I have on hand will probably be too narrow to be comfortable. Driving into town next week, so I can pick up some wider stuff then if that would be helpful.
It's actually just a small length of elastic about an inch and a bit long that's sewed into the ends of the velvet. One of the ones I have has a wider piece of elastic, the other has a narrower. The wider is more comfortable in my opinion, but the narrower hides better when wrapping a scarf like a wide headband. The stretch velvet fabric has some give in and of itself. But I'll see about taking pictures for you, hopefully with a ruler next to it, too.
Okay, rinse-out oil-report--
I put a longer version of this in a blog post, but the takeaway is that the rinse-out oil treatment did wonders for my frizz last week. . . while also driving my scalp batty. I'm very pleased with the efficacy so I tweaked it yesterday. This time I applied before putting on my first round of conditioner, reduced the amount of oil (ten drops), washed my hands really thoroughly after applying to try to avoid transferring any of the oil to my scalp later in the wash process, and used more shampoo than I usually do. (I think this will definitely have to be a pre-shampoo treatment if it's going to work for me.) So far, so good. The frizz reduction is dramatic enough that I'm willing to keep experimenting for a while. Maybe a different oil would get along better with my scalp? I would rather have a "never the twain shall meet" approach, but brushing necessarily spreads things around a bit.
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