S_C, re: Not brushing wet hair.  If you are talking the 100-strokes type of conditioning brushing, then yes.  Wet hair either stretches more and gets over-extended, or is heavier and thus already under the strain (I bet Crystal knows the original reason for that one), so the extensive brushing done to move skin oil from the scalp to the end is way to much for it.   If you are talking detangling brushing that's a bit different.  The only way I could ever brush my hair, back when I was deluded enough to do so (proper curly hair care departs widely from the WASP, hetero-normative, fiscally conservative, norm - it's down-right pinko-hippy), was if I did it in the shower, while still conditioned.  That is still the best time for a gentle untangling done via the instruments god gave me for the task (phalanges), which doesn't seem to do any harm - certainly much less than the abuse to my scalp and hair that dry-brushing would entail.

OK, Crystal, on the topic of shampoos: my mom is in LOVE with St. Ives shamoos and conditioners.  How good are they for your hair?

Also: my hair is very fine, but quite thick.  As it is, I have a grand total of three hairstyles I can do with it: loose, braided, or bun (which is sort of my "default").  I can't seem to get it to stay in anything else without hyooj amounts of hairspray.  Clips, pins and such just slide right off my head.  My hair will hold a curl for about three seconds.  What can I do that's different and pretty and doesn't require 42 hours of prep time and/or as many hands as Vishnu?

Crys, you've seen my head.
Is there any way to keep my hair from seizing and devouring everything that gets too close?

My recommendation is getting some sort of anti-frizz treatment, and then seeing an exorcist.  For the anti-frizz treatment, The Lovely Missy has a few I recommended to her, so feel free to rob her of some of one of them to see if it helps.  Remember that these products tend to weigh down hair a bit, and too much will cause serious and disturbing oiliness.  Try to use a spot the size of a dime in your hand, and then rub your hands together before putting them in your hair.  Do this while it is damp.   As for the exporcist, I will talk to my lovely grandmother and see if she can find one for you.

O Wise Crystal:

How do I tell if a shampoo is a protein shampoo? What sorts of things should I be looking for on the ingredients listing?
*snip*
 When I was a wee lass I remember Mom bought a shampoo by Suave called Balsam & Protein, and that my hair liked that stuff. Can't find it now, though, and I looked. Is this the sort of thing I should be looking for?

Also, you recommended I shower less frequently than once a day. If I go more than two days without showering I feel horribly icky (unless I am at a festival in the woods where I am actually getting MUCH more dirty than in normal life, proving that this is a purely mental issue) and my scalp itches. In fact it itches a whole damn lot and gets a bit dandruffy, and my hair seems to almost clump with oil... ick. Is it ok if I shower every two days?

-Tamsin, who never had anyone tell her anything useful about her hair other than "cut it when the ends split open a lot" and "don't wash it with soap."

The first question:  Protein shampoos will normally have the word protein somewhere on them.  If you aren't having any luck at grocery stores, many pharmacies have a wider selection, or you can try a Cost Cutters or other low-priced salon.   If they don't have protein written on the bottle, they tend to use the word strengthening somewhat interchangably.  Look for things like soy or soy milk, wheat germ, jojoba, vitamin E, and similar ingredients.  Basically you want something that when you look at the ingredients, there are a lot of high protein lipids in it.  Nut oils, legume oils, and grain oils are good for this, as are vitamin E and some B vitamins, especially B12.

As to the second, I didn't recommend you shower less frequently.  Simply that you wash your hair less frequently.  Most times, your hair simply needs rinsing, and perhaps some conditioner, depending on how damaged it is.  Feel free to shower as often as you like, just don't wash your hair every time you shower.  ^_^ 

OK, Crystal, on the topic of shampoos: my mom is in LOVE with St. Ives shamoos and conditioners.  How good are they for your hair?

Also: my hair is very fine, but quite thick.  As it is, I have a grand total of three hairstyles I can do with it: loose, braided, or bun (which is sort of my "default").  I can't seem to get it to stay in anything else without hyooj amounts of hairspray.  Clips, pins and such just slide right off my head.  My hair will hold a curl for about three seconds.  What can I do that's different and pretty and doesn't require 42 hours of prep time and/or as many hands as Vishnu?

St. Ives is actually pretty good.  If you find that they don't work well for you, or they dry your hair out, it may be because of the Sodium Laureth Sulfate in the ingredients.  This is in most shampoos to a greater or lesser extent, which is why so many of the less expensive ones (which use more of it) can be damaging to hair. 

Ahhh, the eternal hairstyle question.  I have that hair, too.  When it's not short and being ignored, it's in a ponytail and being ignored.  Frankly, hair like ours (using professional tools I got my hair to stay curled for 6 hours once.  I threw a party.) is a big pain in the ass to style.  The only sollution I've found is to find a good hairdresser and a texture heavy cut.  Even that, though, requires maintenance and occasionally a lot of work. 

I might be able to come up with a few hairstyles if you can give me a bit more information.  Hair length, amount of time you're willing to spend, what sort of haircut you have, those sorts of things.  A picture of your face, straight on, will give me an idea what sorts of styles will work well with it, if you feel like finding/taking one.  And I'd also like to know if you would be willing to cut it, and how much you'd be willing to cut off if so.

I have a question for my mum too... she has combination hair. Her scalp is *really* dry think chunks of dried flesh flying off of her scalp filling her head with a haze of white dry but the bottom layer of her hair is often stuck together in clumps greasy by the end of the day.

She's tried shampoo for combination hair, she's tried expensive salon type shampoos... and usually when she tries something new it will work for about a week and then after that I get a new bottle of shampoo...

What can she do to make her hair more tolerable for her?

(she's also tried those specially forumlated just incase you have head fungus shampoos and they just make things worse all around)

Those fungus shampoos are often quite caustic, so they would totally make things worse for her.  What I would recommend in this case is a moisturizing scalp treatment (ask around, not all salons do them, but there has to be one somewhere nearby that will) for the upper half of her scalp, and a shampoo for oily hair that she uses only on the bottom part of her hair.  Basically, if she gets a monthly or bi-monthly scalp treatment for the dry part of her scalp, and then makes sure to wash the bottom part of her hair more frequently than the dry top part, it will help a lot.

 Also, I would recommend she use cool water to wash her hair.  It's much more important to do so if you have dry scalp, as hot water strips the natural scalp oils like crazy, and it's possible that the underside of her hair is over-producing oil in response to the dryness of the rest of her scalp.  In her specific case, I would recommend that she look for shampoo that has no Sodium Laureth Sulfate, as that tends to make any dryness worse.

hahahahaha

yeah, it smells amazing.  Does the hair feel any better?  I guess it's too soon to tell for sure, huh?

Sweet.  I'm glad to hear it.  ^_^

Dear Crystal:

I have lots of Qs and comments.

So I spent like $100 at the beauty store, and untold amounts at the drugstore where I work, working up to doing a BUNCH of stuff to my hair.

1. Straighten. I buy One N' Only Curl Remover - I've done this before, so no questions here.
2. Cut it. Bought brand new scissors. I've also done this before, with mixed results. I'm hoping for Best Ever this time - I plan to take my time with it. Attempting to thin out the underlayer, and have a texture-y piece-y short bob. My usual, just better, basically.
3. Color it. I've done it before with like, "Special Effects" and "Manic Panic" and such - but this time I picked up "Jazing" from Sally's. It's a demi-permanent, so it doesn't have ammonia or peroxide and will theoretically mostly wash out. I don't bleach, but since I do straighten, my hair's porous enough to hold it for a while, but since it fades, it doesn't look as obvious as when permanent haircolor grows out ("roots"). So my actual questions are:

 I bought their color called "Ebony" (black) and also, "Black Cherry" (a dark red). The woman there wasn't able to tell me what the base of the black was. I want a brown or red-based black. When I smeared a bit on my hand, it seemed to be brown-based, but maybe you'd have an insider guess. So I was going to mix the two colors and try to get a reddish-black, with some lighter highlights/sections.

2. I totally scrunched my eyebrows together for a long time trying to figure out how to do this (highlighting) - since I'm not using bleach I can't pull it through a highlighting cap and do that... red over black won't show up much. THEN I thought - can I cover the strands I want lighter in vaseline or conditioner, dye the rest, wash, then go back and color the left-out strands? I know it won't be PERFECT, but do you think it would work at all?

Thanks^_^

Purely as a comment - I bought one of those ionic tourmaline ceramic dryers at Sally's - and when I first tried it, I wasn't too impressed. Seemed like a hairdryer all right. However, this is Day Two and my hair is quite soft and... not disgustingly oily. Usually by Day Two I need a wash badly. At first I thought perhaps the higher heat of the old dryer was just aggravating my scalp and making it produce oil, but I would get oily hair even if I had skipped hairdrying all together. Weird but true. I also got a nice straightening iron FREE with the dryer, but I want to go back and see if I can get a wider one, since the 1" just isn't working for me. Bah! I hope they have some left.

Question: When they say "wash your hair every other day", do they mean "use water but no shampoo", or "hair shouldn't get wet at all"?

Note:  I'm still sitting here crying, and I have no clue why I'm posting a hair question.

Nine... umm... couldn't you dye your hair the red and then pull the hair through a streaking cap for the black?
Or am I just easily confused...

Oooh! I've got one!

How can 2in1 shampoo/conditioners possibly work? How does the shampoo differentiate between existing conditioner (which needs washing out) and the new conditioner?
Seems to me they either don't condition well, or they don't wash well...

If the base seemed brown when you spread it out, it was either a yellow, gold, brown or green base. If it is any of those other than the green base, it should work well with the red.

The other thing that I would suggest is if you want to highlight the hair, section off the chunks you want to have lighter and then pin them out of the way, or vice versa. If you were only wanting to do the streaks a darker color, or if you were bleaching, the balliage technique, in which you use a brush to paint highlights onto the hair would work well.

Hmm. Thanks, Crystal. I guess I will post in the Pictures thread when I get it done... if I don't look like a hideous freak of nature; )