Day 8: Hair

Most days I'm really lazy with my hair. The amount I care about it and frequency in which I style it correlates with its length, however, and my hair is just about as long as it's ever been, at least since middle school. I kept it fairly short all through high school, and aside from the occasional dying or crimping I didn't do anything beyond a side clip or a pony tail.
Without fail, every single time I go get my hair trimmed (I only trim it unless I'm planning a dramatic cut) whoever cuts it is like "Omg, you have sooooo much hair!!!!1!!"
I fucking know, okay? Jesus, I live with this Amazon forest every day. The last time I had my hair dramatically cut (12 inches off for Locks of Love) the woman had to get these enormous shears that looked like they were for branches just to slice through my pony tail. I get it. But they continue to tell me.

If it's not huge and sturdy, my hair will break it.

So I have a lot to work with. And lately it's this giant curtain that gets in my way when I do anything. Every time I wash it it sheds all over the place. So for the past few months I've been looking for nice looking ways to get it out of the way, because I'm really bored with just putting it up. I like the way it looks when it's crimped (see largest picture) and clipped back, but if it's not the right size it won't hold hardly anything.
So I looked into braiding this summer. I've never really understood french braiding, and I still can't do the against the head tight braids, but I did learn the basic braid (top right). I usually have to do it more than once. How did I learn? YouTube, of course.
Second on the right is the easiest type of braid to learn, in my opinion. The fish braid. This I can do really quickly. Apparently, though, it makes me look like an Indian, because my hair was like this when a not-so-educated wife said I "looked like I was from Arizona."
The last style is my favorite but can be kind of a pain in the ass. It's a sock bun, also a style I learned from YouTube. A quick written tutorial:

1. Find an old sock you don't want anymore. Use the length and thickness of your hair to determine the length and thickness of the sock.
2. Cut off the bottom where the toes go.
3. Roll it into a doughnut shape.
4. Make your hair a little damp; it's much easier this way. Spritz it, comb it with water, whatever.
5. Put your hair into a pony tail; put the doughnut on it and slide it to the end of your hair, leave about two inches.
6. Curl the end of your hair around and into the doughnut sock.
7. Roll it up, distributing your hair around the sock as you go so it doesn't show.

It should make a nice neat bun. My problem with it is it starts to come undone, and as for pinning it I haven't discovered a way that doesn't look a little weird. The fun part about it is though, if you can make it a little damper than usual, put your hair up higher and make it stay, if you sleep on it it gets all curly when you take it out. It would probably be better to do two separate buns on either side, though.

I advise just wandering YouTube when you type in "hair tutorial" or something, it's kind of fun and people have some cool ideas.