My Hair | The Bantu Knots (& Bantu knotouts) Struggle

18.10.14

Never mind Naptural85, Naturally Curly, Natural Sistas, Jenell Stewart and the rest of them who make Bantu knotouts look like a breeze. IT ISN'T!
Do you follow me on Instagram? You'd have seen all the pictures from my struggle

There I was basking in the euphoria of some really cool products I got in the goodie bag for the Beauty Africa pre-event cocktail. I specifically went round the bags and asked the guy from Design Essentials which products were great for natural hair (I had met them at the Health and Wellness fair the previous saturday and spent a lot of time convincing them that I wasn't convinced their products would be great for my hair. I looked them up online and decided to give them a chance. The good Lord was on my side as they were sponsoring the goodie bags that night. Review of them coming soon.)

Now you guys know, I'm not really big on applying product on my hair. For me, it should be all easy breezy, and when it isn't, it all goes in a puff. This time around, I saw a curl stretching cream and I was all agog to do a twist bantu knotout (this is when you do a 2-strand twist and then use that same twist to form a bantu-knot). I couldn't get enough of it, I was convinced it was the answer to my prayers.

I got home, sat in front of the mirror with my water, a Design Essentials Argan mist, oil and the curl stretching cream
The left is where I ended that night. I posted it on facebook and had my fingers crossed. The right is where I ended the next day (well, after church. The humidity had gotten into it and it was a big, puffy poof of awesome). Can you believe that?
Well, this is actually where I ended up in the morning. Can you see the definition of the curls? It was right awesome. I was in love. It was the answer to my prayers and proved that I was on the right track.

After church and the humidity and all, I was convinced that the hair needed some more time to dry as it was still a bit damp in the morning and I proceeded to re-do the twist bantu knots. This time in smaller sizes because I wanted more defined curls. I wore the bantu knots to work for 2 full days
The left is Monday and Tuesday, my fresh bantu knots that were going to create an awesome knot-out that would be the envy of all. The right is Wednesday morning when I took them down. WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED?
this is the damage the humidity did to my hair on wednesday. Thank goodness I had my Chezjumelle silk scarf in the car. I just wrapped it round my hair around 1pm to bring some sanity to my look.
On the bright side, below is the video I posted on Sunday morning, glorying in the beauty of my bantu-knots. Little did I know.

      Post by Barbara & 1923.
So I'm quite lost now, what happened? Did I use too little product or too much? Was the product wrong? Was my hair supposed to be in a certain type of condition?
Anyone with answers please?
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