Hair revelation (revolution!!)

Ok, so I haven't crafted at all whatsoever this week.  Well, I knit about half a row of the shawl I'm working on.  No spinning.  No crochet.  A fraction of cross stitch.  I stumbled onto a website www.naturallycurly.com and have been furiously reading posts.  Through the magical wonders of the internet I now, after 25 years of uncontrollable frizzies, know how to manage my hair.  Here's a photo of what I usually have to deal with.  It's blurry, but oh well.  This was taken before I knew the magical wonders of eyebrow tweezing, or the mystery of the enchanted hair straightener of fate.

But I swear.  I SWEAR.  As I sit at this very moment I have actual ringlets and not a single HINT of frizz.  I have had five good hair days in a row without straightening.  This is just ASTOUNDING. 

And why was curly hair care such a mystery?  Because my mom's hair is super thin and pin straight.  I didn't discover until high school that if I don't brush my hair while it's drying I get sorta curls.  It never occurred to me before that not to brush my hair.  I used to buy cremes, Frizz Ease, leave in conditioners, mousse, gel, wax and nothing would eliminate frizz completely.  I did discover that I had better chances if I let my hair air dry and not touch it at all while during the drying process.  That was the extent to my knowledge, and I never did get consistent results.

Here is what I do now:  NO shampoo, instead I wash my hair with conditioner by massaging my scalp with the pads of my fingers.  After rinsing that out I put in more conditioner and let it sit on there while I do the rest of my washing.  Then I switch to cool water and rinse the conditioner out.  Then while I'm still standing in the shower with sopping wet hair I scrunch in more conditioner as a leave in treatment, and then about a nickle size amount of honey, and then scrunch in some silicone free gel.  The trick, I learned, is to use products free of sulfates and silicones.  THEN I dry my hair with a t-shirt by plopping.  After the plopping, I just unleash the mane and let it air dry WITHOUT TOUCHING AND WITHOUT BRUSHING.  This sounds like a process, but it actually doesn't take much longer than what I usually do. 

One beautiful aspect of this is that I can sleep on these curls and they are fine the second day.  Ah, I am starting to make peace with my curlies.  No more straight-envy.  What a revolutionary idea.