Well, I had to stop with the brushing. It was making my dreads look WORSE!! They attracted MORE lint and got really frizzy.. Plus they seemed to be getting pulled apart by the brushing.. Maybe my brush was too hard, but personally I just don't see the point.

However, the oils are working great. I even started oiling with peanut oil, not because of any special qualities of peanut oil, just because I have a little bottle of peanut oil that I could lift easily, and a GIANT 25LB JUG of vegetable oil that would have been a hassle to pour. Do the math. i'm lazy. :p But it really does a good job. It lasts so I don't even have to use it everyday if I don't want to. I even added some to my conditioner and it boosts teh shine even more! I've tried the vegetable oil before, but I was hooked on the idea that store products worked better. Now that that honeymoon is over, I'm happy with these results. The vegetable oil works too, but it actually seems that the peanut oil DOES work better. I'll have to test the theory one day, but for now I've got a bottle fulla peanut oil and I'm lovin' it. :)

I've started washing my hair more often, or at least rinsing it out with some conditioner.. I was going every 5 days,, then every 4, now it's just whenever I feel like it.. My locs were getting a bit of a.. well, not an ODOR.. But a smell on the ends. Not a BAD smell.. Just.. Like the scented oils and conditioners were settling in the ends of my dreads and just not blending well.. With the extra washings, all that is gone.. I plan to try a deep cleaning to see if some of this lint can be washed out.. Maybe not but a good deep cleansing followed by a deep conditioning is just wonderful for locs. FOR HAIR in general I believe.. But dreads are bigger strands of hair so they need the deep cleanings more.. :)

Also I've been thinking about this. I've been trying to see dreads as just another hair type. Sucks that we don't have good products geared towards that, I mean the mainstream products that look pretty, smell good, and they have all this hype to say about it.. (Hype is like a placebo effect... If you believe it will work, it will at least for a while.. Well, most of the time. ) But the thought was also that I now am on the 'other side' of hair.. Instead of having extremely 'curly' hair.. It's not literally STICK STRAIGHT!! (Well, the roots are coily still, but the dreaded part is straight. ) It even hangs stick straight and when it's wet, it just hangs there. If I was a person for fancy hairdos, I'd be in trouble and would be going nuts trying to curl and all that crap.. Even a braid out isn't possible because my sticks are so BIG, they don't stay braided, and if they did the difference wouldn't be very dramatic. Curls I think would look cute, but hubby says it will look like curled up snakes since my dreads are so big. Personally, taking the whole stick straight theory, the curls will just fall down anyway, at most making pretty cute waves.. But when I have to BUY curlers, it's hard to convince a man you NEED curlers when you have locs.. Oh well.. :) I think I'll get over it.. At least he doesn't hate dreads anymore. And he knows they aren't dirty now.. So it's not a total loss. :)

Well, those are my thoughts for today. More later. :)

Jen