Archives for category: Hair

This is my friend, Sherry, on a frigid night in Denver after getting warmed up a little with a mojito. Her hair always looks great and she looks especially cute in that hat.  As my hair is getting nearly as long as hers, I quizzed her a bit on her styling methods.  Similar to me, she’s not much interested in spending lots of time on it.  Hopefully I’m not outing her too much – she often rides to work with rollers in her semi-damp hair and then yanks them out as she gets to work.  Tada! Hmmm…something to consider. Of course that’s about 2-3 more steps than I take.

Sherry

I generally avoid hats to avoid major hathead to which my hair is particularly prone.  Husband got me this sweet upcycled sweater hat for my birthday and I wore it straight for about two days. If you don’t take the hat off…you don’t have hathead, right?

Birthday Hat

Meanwhile another birthday gift showed up, this one from Sherry!  Velcro rollers – did not even know those existed.  You just put them in and they stick.  Kind of.

Curlers

Some time around then, I also got bangs.  I just couldn’t take it any more.

I’m no stranger to rollers or bangs:

Rollers and Bangs

Post-rollers, feeling a bit over-coiffed:

Soccer Mom

Understandably, after my twelve months of complaining about growing my hair out, the questions just keep coming: when are you cutting your hair? are you cutting your hair on the 1st? etc.

You know, I just don’t know.  Feels kind of dumb to just whack it off right away after all this trouble.  Let’s see what the new year brings.

From December 15, 2012:

Once upon a time we could drop our kids off at school without feeling so scared.

I started this hair/blog project as a frivolous distraction from seriousness and sadness in the world.

But some events demand attention. They deserve full focus.

We give them that, and simultaneously we keep living. We remember the good. We encourage our kids to embrace life and love and beauty and magic and laughter. We have a good cry and then we allow ourselves to have a good laugh too.

Maybe, when we’re ready, we could laugh at the hair of fictional characters. A dozen dos for you to peruse:

Olive-oyl-pictures-61 Princess-leiaCousin-Itt-addams-familyhunger-games-effiePipibernini_medusagirl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-06TANGLEDbride-of-frankensteinQueenamidala 220px-Marge_Simpson

Oops, that’s only eleven. Who would you add?

P.S. On Friday night I thought about gun control and mental illness. I wondered why people bring children into this world. And I thought about my own choice to do so without a partner in a way I never had before. I hugged the babes and I cried to Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXxcMw5PTDg and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLHCC3geTpc. I knew I could only begin to imagine what people more directly involved were going through.

P.P.S. Thanks Bill.

This is Beth. And this is how I look turning 45 on 12/10/13 (a “helfie,” [thanks Michelle!] – the color is for the girl who has strongly suggested blue from the start of all this [sorry I don’t have a bow]):

dec helfie

Here’s the post from last year:

It’s my birthday and I’m going to a party tonight. The party is not for me, and I hope not to cry.

I do expect to cry during 2013, however (and probably sooner). Sometimes over my hair.

I wanted to take this opportunity to document the starting do. This is how I look turning 44 on 12/10/12:

bday bday bow

(Thanks photo’ers Jilly & Mae)

What will I look like turning 45 on 12.10.13? Whatever the do, I do promise to redo the bow-on-head pic.

P.S. Links to the song: Lesley Gore and Amy Winehouse.

P.P.S. I just learned (thank you Google) that I share a birthday with Ada Lovelace. From opensecrets.org: “Female bloggers owe a lot to Ada Lovelace, the imaginative and intelligent “enchantress of numbers.” As the first person to envision the use of computers for purposes beyond mathematical computations — and considered by many to be the first computer programmer — Lovelace not only paved the way for all those who use the Internet to communicate and educate, but continues to serve as a hero for women and girls involved in math, science and technology.” Also, a nice do.

adalovelace

Liz here,

When Beth and I first cooked up this project in November, 2012, I started doing image searches to figure out what I wanted to do. One of my searches led me to an awesome pinterest board “Cute, sexy, awesome hair.”  I was scanning through the amazing blue, purple, and rainbow-hued do’s, but there was one that immediately caught my eye:

Image

I have a long-standing love for all things lizard (from a childhood/HS nickname of “Lizard”), so when I first met with my stylist Maggie last December, I showed her the picture of the guy on the far left. “I’m open to all kinds of cuts and colors,” I said, “but I definitely want to do the lizard mohawk.”

Image

Maggie said ok, and recommended that we close out the year with the mohawk, since there wouldn’t be much hair to work with afterwards. A few times during the year, she did ask me “are you sure you don’t want to try a different mohawk? like that guy from JPL?” (he is awesome!)

Image

But I had my sights set on the lizard do, and Maggie was convinced.  We started out with some lizard clipart, and Maggie sized it and made a paper template.

0511-0810-0715-3646_Lizard_Silhouette_clipart_image IMG_3052

Maggie shaved around the template (with a second person holding down the paper.)

IMG_3053

I did have a little bit of a quiet freakout when the sides of my head were fully shaved (not to mention having supershort hair in the middle of an historic cold snap.)  All in all, it turned out fantastic:

IMG_3069 photo 1 (3) (One toe had to be eliminated and two toes on another foot were merged into one.)

IMG_3074IMG_3065We had some “eye stickers” leftover from a craft at work, which added some personality to the lizard.

89509111314737296_aTt0DzYF_c  IMG_3067Pretty dang close to the ideal version! (My only regret is that I forgot to save a “tail”, but that’s what clip-in braids from Claire’s are for!)

This is Beth. A year later, with Liz and Michelle.

LC & BK Nov 2013 MJ & BK Nov 2013

November 30, 2012 saw the first changingthelocks.com post – Inspired by a six year old, kind of. Here it is:

The girl wanted an asymmetrical cut so we Googled it and told friends. Liz said people in Hollywood change their hair all the time, wouldn’t it be fun. . . So – crazy idea, new project: Liz and I will get new hairdos every month for a year and blog about it. Silly and irrelevant in this world of much seriousness and sadness, plus time consuming, but potentially fun, distracting, and hopefully entertaining.

short_redhead

The girl picked this pic to show the haircutter. Her $12 cut – not so short, not so red, and looks a bit like she cut it herself. But we like it.

kids_hairstyles__little_boys_haircuts

The boy got his hair cut too, based on this pic.

P.S. (A year later) It has been silly and irrelevant in this world of much seriousness and sadness, plus time consuming, but also fun, distracting, and hopefully entertaining. Thank you Liz and Michelle!

You probably already know that the word of the year, according to Oxford Dictionaries, is selfie. It’s been all over the news.  In some related report, I heard about variations on the “word,” including helfie or hair selfie.

I guess that’s what we’ve been doing all year – helfies…

In honor, here’s my November helfie. Please note that hair is touching my coat.  And it’s wet. And I’m wearing a coat.  Just how I roll.

Helfie

This is Beth. Revisiting some early thoughts. From December 2012 (please note, the exhibit mentioned at the end opens this week):

I love Denver. I love love living where I live. I have a humongous (possibly out of proportion) sense of pride having been born in Denver.

The connection I have to my city – and, well, the whole damn state of Colorado – has nothing to do with my do. Or does it?

Liz and I are both from Denver. That means we came into the world and spent our child-through-young-adult-hoods (until college for both of us) in a very dry climate. We both, by the way, have naturally curly hair. For that reason, we’re kinda lucky to live in a low-humidity environment. Others feel the same way. Check out Reason to Love Denver #22 by Lindsey B. Koehler in 5280 December 2012. (to get directly to #22 click to page 4, though I recommend reading other rockin’ reasons as well).

But, don’t move to Colorado. While in many ways we’re happy to share the dry air with frizzy-haired friends, we’re already sharing with more folks than ever before. We’re dealing with problems of too many people, particularly in Our Mountains. The impacts go way way beyond hair. As Colorado becomes increasingly hotter and drier, what choices will we make?

It’s not too early to plan a visit to the History Colorado Center to explore real (way beyond hair) climate-related issues. Living West opens November 23, 2013. And meanwhile, tour the exhibits already on display – including Denver A to Z, a love letter to my city. And, hell, go on up to Our Mountains, I hear the snow’s great. (Well…)

*THANKS to Michelle for sending link to article. Thank you HCC for allowing us to think about the health of our state in way-more-important-than-hair ways; and to SMM, Jeff Hayward, and Janet Kamien for helping us do it.

So, it’s October, month 10.  I haven’t caved yet but there are days…  Due to my lack of interest in styling my hair, I’m still struggling with the awkward growing out stuff.  I have purchased a brush which I have used once – with a blowdryer! This is big stuff for me.  I also bought some root lifter product, also used exactly once.

Each visit to the Dollar Store (I buy my dog’s Pepcid there and thus a frequent visitor…), I have spent about a dollar  on a new accessory, most of which I still can’t use.  Beth, probably tired of hearing me complain about my hair in my face, bought me this adorable bejeweled headband shown with some of my Dollar Store finds.

Accessories

My version of styling – wash (or not), if washed, part with hands, air dry:

Wet   

Which results in this later in the day – hair in face:

In the face  

Which leads to a headband the moment I get home.  Add that to my ritual of immediately removing all jewelry and donning pajamas as early in the evening as possible.  It’s a good look.

For those who think my hair isn’t growing fast, check out a pic from last year’s Booklovers’ Ball and one from this year.  And yes, someone else did my hair.  If she had seen the before picture, she wouldn’t have kept asking me if she was making it too short with all the curls!  Yeah, right.

Late 2011 Look  20131019_180805

Michelle here.  Oops, skipped a month.  Month 8 was pretty much like month 7 and month 9.  Hair is getting longer! Shocking, I know, since I’m growing it out.  In fact, it’s now longer than Beth’s and Liz’!  So there.  We’ve finally switched places.

Beth and Michelle

I’m still wearing a lot of headbands in the heat.  Our state is now experiencing a crazy amount of rain so I fully expect to be wearing this headband for the next few days.

Mae and Michelle

Hopeful that in month 10 these new little bands will come in handy.  I’m prepared.  I’m ready for a ponytail!

Little hairbands

Liz here,

This past weekend, I got to experience up close one of my big inspirations for the hair project when I attended KCON in Los Angeles.

KCON (short for “Korean Convention”) is a two-day festival of Korean pop culture, and 2013 is only the 2nd year they’ve held it.

1010160_602883566409543_68206433_n

The big draw was the concert on Sunday night which featured several different K-Pop groups.  Two of the biggest draws for the concert are also my hair heroes:

G-Dragon:

130116-gdragon-golden-disk-awards-malaysia_015IMG_1966

And the 12 member group, EXO:

images (1) IMG_23761010755_594074890614836_2006037293_n

Sadly, G-Dragon and EXO are pretty boring hair-wise at the moment (basic platinum is K-Pop “boring.”) Fortunately, new group Teen Top stepped up to the plate with some fantastic hair. It looked even better in the gold lamé ensembles that they wore when performing.

image_readtop_2013_763915_13774880221023980

There was also lots of time on Saturday and Sunday to go to panels, wait in line for silly prizes (free ramen cups! flashing green ears!), pick up Korean BBQ at food trucks, and most importantly, people watch! There was so much fantastic hair:

IMG_2415 IMG_2448

IMG_2417 IMG_2418

IMG_2419IMG_2444

IMG_2445 IMG_2446

IMG_2447 IMG_2443

This was only a tiny, tiny fraction of the amazing, fun hair on display! The video recap has a few more excellent examples:

Who knows what my hair will be like in 2014, but I might have to check out KCON again, just to see what’s happening in the colorful world of K-Pop hair.

%d bloggers like this: