Posts

Showing posts from December, 2014

Testing the "Float Test" for Hair Porosity, Part One

Image
Porosity is tricky to define because of these three things: 1) Porosity is a physical condition that belongs to an individual hair - or a portion of a hair. It is the amount of surface area with porosities - gaps and holes through which water and other things can move. 2) Porosity is a behavior or your individual hairs and your hair as a whole - how quickly does water move through any porosities present. 3) We want to use porosity to determine what to do to our hair - but all the things we do can modify our hair's porosity-behavior or even mask actual porosity. For example, sun-damaged and therefore porous hair may feel different than bleach-damaged and therefore porous hair. Or hair which is easily weighed down or low-density (thin hair) may or may not be able tolerate lots of conditioner and heavy oil applications that we usually think porous hair needs. Different porous hair has different needs. Why does porosity-behavior matter? Let's say you use a henna or cassia treatment...

Laundry Static-Control Tip

Image
Upcoming post news:   I've been a busy blogger - but not busy blogging.  Currently I'm working on a post in which I'll examine (and photograph) the at-home test for hair porosity called the "strand float test." Look for that in the coming week. Here's a handy laundry tip for cutting static in laundry coming out of the dryer without using fabric softener . Fabric softener tends to make towels less absorbent and coats laundry. It also tends to be heavily fragranced (unless you buy fragrance-free). In winter I like to dry laundry on a rack indoors like in this post . But some things won't fit, like sheets. So that's where I use aluminum foil. Pull off a large-ish piece of aluminum foil - a little larger than a letter-size sheet of paper. Crumple it up - try to crumple the edges on the inside to make the ball last longer and avoid sharp edges. Make 2 or 3 of these and toss them in the dryer with your laundry. You won't get shocked when you handle the l...