Hi everybody!

My name's Cavale.

I live in Orlando.

My boyfriend had dreads for a few months about two and a half years ago. We used the DreadHeadHQ kit, until finally they drove him absolutely nuts and he cut off all of his long beautiful hair and looked like a douche bag for a year while it grew back.

I've been planning to get dreadies of my since he had his, but thanks to a few rash decisions and terrible gaffes regarding my hair, it never worked out.

But we visited the Rainbow Gathering in February, and it completely inspired us. Sam started bathing even less then ever before, leading to dreads for him regardless of his wishes about it. But he's started working on them and they look very nice and he loves them this time around. His head is about half backcombed and half natural and I'm really interested in how it will come out. The backcombed ones are really nice, knotty and healthy so far.

As for me, I finally took the plunge after taking a shower and then tripping too hard to comb my hair out. It was a tangled mess by the next morning and I just took that as a sign. My hair is fairly straight, so I'm mostly backcombing, but I think I might do a couple natural dreads if they feel like that's what they want to do.

I've basically just been slowly grabbing chunks of hair that seem like they love each other and backcombing them, working from front to back. It's been 18 days and have a little over half my head done. Right now I can only do as many as I can get other people to section off for me, because I can't see the back of my head.

Anyway, I was wondering: is there any way to stop the itching? Also, is there anything I can do about my roots? On a lot of my dreads it will feel all nice and tight until I get up to the top where it just feels like hair. Is it too early to crotchet? I got so annoyed by my roots that I put rubberbands on almost all of them. Is that bad? Also, what do I do about little tendrils of hair that I missed when backcombing? And one about all those little baby hairs near my hairline? They won't fit into a dread. My boyfriend thinks they're cute but they annoy me.

I'll upload a couple pics to my profile and also the group and post a link.

Okay. So. Advice? Opinions? Insults? Compliments? Secrets? Lies?

Go for it. Please.