One of my goals this year was to learn some new skills. Some things I had in mind were to do a sign language course, to get back in to some sewing, and to perhaps try my hand at a new sport. What I DIDN’T have in mind was learning how to give someone dreadlocks.
Hubsband: Honey, I’ve wanted dread locks for a while now, can I get them?
Wifey: Sure, how much are they?
Hubsband: $500 to get them done at the salon….
Wifey: $500??????????
Hubsband: or $150 for a DIY kit that you can buy on-line which means you could dread my hair! Wouldn’t that be tee-yodally awesome?
Wifey: Ummmmmmmmmmmmm….. sure, okay….
So the kit was ordered, and on ANZAC Day 2008 (a Friday) we began.
Before we begin: Say goodbye to Hubsband’s beautiful, untangled, luscious hair (sniff)
Step One: Section off the hair in to 1 inch squares and put them in rubber bands. I made 70 sections, a perfect 35 on each side. (2 hours)
Step Two: Spray the hair with Locking Accelerator – stuff that knots your hair up good and proper (5 minutes)
Step Three: Backcombing. Now on the instructional DVD, it takes about 5 minutes to explain this process, but takes a lot longer to do. Basically it’s teasing the hair, but in a gradual way so as not to create big messy clumps of hair. It takes about 100 strokes per inch of dread, and some of Hub’s hair was 14 inches long!! I managed to get it to about 20 minutes per dread which I was quite happy with. Here are some of Hub’s first dreads:
Now before I go on to Step 4, let me give you an insight into our “dread week”:
Friday: 12noon til 9:30pm – Sectioning, backcombing, finished 14 dreads (my hands were like claws when I went to bed – I could hardly move them. But they were okay on Saturday)
Saturday: 8:00am (Hubs made me a cooked brekky to start the day off) til 3:00pm – 15 Dreadlocks. Then I went to a hen’s night!
Sunday: 7:30pm (late start) til 10:30pm – 7 Dreadlocks
So by this stage Hubs had half a head of dreads. AND he had to go to work on Monday morning! Tee hee! We really thought I’d be finished by now, but we were only half way through.
Monday: 4:00pm til 10:30pm – 17 Dreadlocks (and Wifey was getting a little tired of this by now!)
Tuesday: 5:00pm til 10:30pm – 14 Dreadlocks. I only had 3 to go but just couldn’t do it that night
Wednesday: BLISS!! Finished the last 3!! Or so I thought….
Step Four: Waxing the little friggers. Each dread had to be waxed and rolled which took about an hour. Then they had to be blow dried so the wax really soaks in. That took another half an hour. And low and behold, Wednesday night my Hubs had dreads. Total time physically working on them (excluding breaks): 33 hours. 
And since then he’s had heaps of comments on how awesome they are (not just from me!) They do look really great actually. And because all the hair gets caught in them (eew) it doesn’t fall out all over the place! Hooray! I must admit that I feel a sense of pride when Hubs tells people that I did his hair for him. It’s certainly a new skill that I’ve learnt! Oh, and I NEVER want to do it again!
yes on the eww part! and all that time just to do his hair. i reckon it would have cost you $500 just in labor.
and you could have just gone back to sewing. all you had to do was come up north (where its warm(er)) and visit for a week and you could have stiched 8 tarps together for me!
on the flip side, if your both get trapped in a tall tower together, you could (in theory) cut all his dreadlocks of (about 5 mins)and tie them together (about 40 mins) and climb out. so you need to either a) carry sharp scissors everywhere or b) don’t go to tall towers!