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Khiwi's Pointless Ranting
Long Hair Doesn't Lack Style - You Do
I am sick and tired of people saying long hair has no style. That's ridiculous. Long hair can be styled in many, many different ways. The thing is, a lot of people don't really know how to style hair other than leaving it down and possibly curling or straightening it. So, I decided I would compile a guide here, with links to the clearest, most understandable tutorials (mostly videos) about styling your own long hair I could find. This guide will include links to lots of tutorials on braiding, buns and techniques for heatless straightening/curling. It is meant as a starting point from which to develop your own styles, not as a definitive guide to every kind of style possible.
If any of the links no longer work, please PM me or comment here and let me know so I can find another tutorial to link to instead.

Basic Braiding
These techniques can be combined in many different ways. Use your creativity! You can find more advanced versions of these braids under Advanced Braiding. These techniques are roughly listed by difficulty.
English
Fishtail/herringbone
Rope
French
Dutch(AKA inside-out French)

Advanced Braiding
These more advance braiding techniques are based off of the simple braiding technique shown in parenthesis after each link. Some of these are not much harder than the basic braid, while others are significantly more difficult.
Hawser Braid(rope)
Cable Braid(rope/hawser)
Lace(French/Dutch)
Waterfall(French)
Crown Braid(Dutch)

Ethnic Hairstyles
A lot of these involve many small braids and are not styles you can typically expect to be able to do - at least well - on yourself, because of the time they take to do. These styles are marked with a star. As usual, these have the basic braiding techniques in parenthesis.
Bantu/Zulu Knots(rope braids)
Corn Rows(dutch braids)*
Twists(rope braids)*

Buns
I feel the need to shamelessly plug hair sticks here. Most, if not all of these buns can be anchored using hair sticks. If you use them properly, hair sticks make putting your hair up in a bun much easier and less time consuming. I have made an effort to try and find tutorials that use hair sticks, but not all of the linked videos do. If you do not want to use hair sticks, spin pins also work well to easily anchor buns.
Cinnabun with pins
Nautilus bun
Hypno-bun
Infinity bun
Lazy Wrap bun
Chinese bun.

Curling/Straightening
The links may not mention the technique by the name I use to describe them. The names given are meant to give some sort of description of how the technique works, and I may or may not have come up with these names myself. The premise of some of these techniques should be obvious just by the name, so I have not linked to any specific tutorial. Effects of these techniques follow in parenthesis, if not obvious by the name.
Wrapping(straightening)
damp bunning(waves/curls)
damp braiding(waves)
rag curls(spiral curls)
snake/bandana waves
Cocoon curls

Other things to try
~Half-ups - bun or braid the half-up tail
~Braided buns
~French/Dutch other basic - or advanced! - braids
~Split or combine English braids
~Use your imagination!

If there are any styles you would like me to add, by all means, PM me or comment here and I would be happy to look for a tutorial.

It's easy to say you'd die for someone, but would you live for that person?
The Long Hair Community

Henna
This stemmed from a thread where a person was asking about dying over henna. I just wanted to clear up some misconceptions about henna as a plant used to dye hair.

What many professionals think about henna and why it is misleading:
If you have used henna and go to a salon professional for chemical services, prepared to get lectured: "Henna!? Oh no! That stuff is horrible for your hair! It'll make your hair melt if you ever dye over it!" What a lot of professionals don't understand is that henna itself is fine to perform chemical services on. However, henna will react horribly with chemical dyes when it has metallic salts added to it or indigo mixed with it. Metallic salts will often cause bad reactions when they come into contact with dye. Indigo tends to turn green upon contact with bleach or peroxide. Most -but not all- professionals are not trained to use plant dyes like henna and indigo and many of them are misinformed about henna.

BAQ (body art quality) henna, such as that which can be obtained through Mehandi(US), Henna Sooq (CA/US) or Hennaboy (UK) doesn't have metallic salts in it. The henna products available from Lush and Henna Hut are compound hennas, which just means it has other things added. The henna products from these companies are still safe to dye over because these companies are based in a country with adequate labeling standards you can trust that you are getting what the ingredients list says you are. The problem is when a person goes to, say, an Indian food store and buys henna. India and several other countries that produce henna do not have adequate labeling standards. They are not required to list all the ingredients included in the product, so a person could buy compound henna with metallic salts because they trust the ingredients list without understanding that it could be falsified or not all encompassing. When dying with henna it is of utmost importance to know that your henna is pure and if it isn't what it really contains. That isn't possible if it was packaged in certain countries. If in doubt test it: click here and scroll down to the section entitled "How can you find out if the henna hair dye you've been using has toxic metallic salts?"

Other facts about henna:
-Pure Henna can be dyed over with chemical dyes with no problems.
-Henna comes in one color. Red, which may tend more towards orange or brown.
-When used on hair, henna allows your natural color to show through.
-Fresh henna produces a darker, more vibrant stain.
-The exact shade of red that pure henna will dye your hair may depend on the region in which is was grow and the growing conditions that year.
-Henna should not be used by anyone who is glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) enzyme deficient.
-When henna is used in body art, it is often terped to produce a darker stain.

If you have any further questions, please post them as comments on this entry. Others may have the same question

It's easy to say you'd die for someone, but would you live for that person?
The Long Hair Community

Anne Rice
Anne Rice is often hailed as a good author. Some of her books are enjoyable, but I find it hard to understand why people hail them as such good literature when every time I read one of them I am convinced she just asks herself "What is the most depraved thing I can have this character do and still justify it?" over and over.

I never really got into Anne Rice's vampire books. It just seemed like she tried too hard to make the characters seem badass. Interview with a Vampire was ok, but never got very far into The Vampire Lestat before I couldn't read anymore. There was this whole huge rant about how rock music is so vampiric. I like rock music, I find vampires interesting, but the whole rant annoyed the s**t out of me. Just like in Interview with a Vampire, where Lestat made this whole big deal about drinking blood out of a glass (I believe it was a wineglass). It was stupid, pointless and pretentious.

I really enjoyed The Witching Hour. But I couldn't finish Lasher because I wanted to punch Mona in the face so bad. For some reason, her family doesn't think it's a big deal that she sleeps around even though she's only 13 (in Lasher). And that's ok because "She's so mature." She's a pretentious, self-centered, manipulative b***h, who uses people up and spits them out. She doesn't care who she hurts in order to achieve her means.

Would someone please explain to me why people think these books are so good? I don't mind if you yourself disagree with me, just be civil. Do keep in mind that it has been a while since I read these.

Gomen Nasai!!!
crying I haven't been on Gaia for a little over a month. I've been having computer problems here at home and the admins at school finally got around to blocking access to Gaia.

So...

Two of my female friends have decided to start dating. (this was quite a while ago but I'm trying to make up for the time I've missed)

I went to a hockey game (first one I've gone to since November that the team I was rooting for lost) and I went to the play "Grease" at my cousin's high school.

I have had a lot of homework for Western Civ. First we had a "product" for which I made a medieval hat: a barbette and fillet. Then after doing about twenty pages in the study guide we had a quiz on Medieval Europe. Now that its spring break, the sadists who are erringly titled teachers have assigned us a schematic, which is basically a visual organizer. So, right now I'm looking up pictures of gothic cathedrals for that. When we get back from spring break we have to do an essay for our semester exam. Oh joy! stressed

I'm somewhat behind in Advanced Computers. We are working on a web site on our hobbies. Each of seven pages has to have:
[ ]a background
[ ]a paragraph of text
[X]be linked to every other page
[5/7X]have a picture on it
[ ]one self-made animation (for the enitre site, not per page)
[X]table format
[X]proper image citation
We also have to have 5 extra things to get an A. But since the teacher is sooo nice, he lets us make imporvemnts to our projects after they are due for a better grade. heart

Also, we had Japanese exchange students from Chiba visit last week. They were very elusive. gonk

After Spring Break I get to take my temps test! Wohoo! ...but I haven't studied for it yet. redface

That's about it for the last month and a half. I'm sure I've missed a bunch, but.. whatever. My life is very insignificant and boring can you tell? And if you couldn't, that was a rhetorical question: I do NOT want an answer to that!

crying Feel sorry for me: I got a nosebleed today during lunch. Actually, I thought the entire incident was funny and wonderfully ironic. xd


It's the second day of the new semester!!

My schedule is as follows:

1 Geometry
2 Biology
3 Driver's Education
4 RP Study Hall
5 Japanese
6 Lunch
7 Western Civilization
8 Western Civilization (It's a double blocked class, so it takes two periods)
9 Advanced Computers


So much for my resolution to avoid playing minesweeper. For those who don't know what that is: it's a very simple computer game which consists of grey boxes which you click, which then display the number of "mines" in the boxes adjacent to them. If you click on a box that has no mines adjacent to it, it clears all the other adjacent boxesthat have no mines in them. Click on a mine and you lose the game. Also, you can mark mines by right clicking and clear the other adjacent boxes once you have marked all the ones with mines in them by clicking both mouse buttons at once.
This game is addictive.. at least for me>beware the little colored numbers! They will suck out your soul!

SNOW!!!!!
Yesterday we had a snow day!! Although the snow itself did very little for me, having the day off of school brightened my spirits quite a bit. 3nodding Really, I dislike snow because
snow=cold and cold=*shiver* xd

Anyways, since I had the day off school I got out of a Japanese test, which is already quite a bit late, and had to sit through a whole day less of what has been a very boring week. *cue the snoring* So I slept in and then spent basically all day on the internet. I was on Gaia... but I was also playing Runescape which I hadn't played for quite a while. I learned that I cannot bake a cake. sweatdrop All told, it was an entertaining though thoroughly uneventful day.

Also: Today was not worth mentioning in the face of yesterday. blaugh
And my avvie is strangly green today!!??

Happy New Years!!!!!
This year I resolve to post more on Gaia and Wrong Side of the Mirror and to waste less time playing endless games of Minesweeper.

Why do I make a resolution and thus engage in mindless self-torment like thousands of other members of conformist society?? stressed THE ANSWER IS I DON'T KNOW!!!

Really I'm making a resolution because I wonder if it will make a difference in all it's insignificance. There are so many things about myself that I could change for the better.. but I'm too damn self-indulgent to change them.. *chews on her metaphorical pencil eraser*

As for what I did for New Years.. I ate a lot of finger food.. Watched the movie Simon Birch and because I just never got around to calling anyone to see if they could come over I spent all day without any contact (in person anyway) with people outside my family. I also got to vacuum the house and I slept in until a little after 1:00pm this morning. I also wrote this entire paragraph in reverse chronological order... I had better not make a habit of that xd . Strangely enough I "collect" bad habits, not on purpose it just happens that way.. sweatdrop

In conclusion, I don't know why everyone makes resolutions or why I even bothered wasting my time writing this.. I would also like to point out the fact that I am royally abysmal at writing conclusions before further noting that faults are what make people themselves and not flesh and blood "porcelain" dolls. whatever.

Khiwanean
Community Member
Khiwanean
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