What the Folk!

I get lots of split ends too, though I've been better about getting it cut regularly lately so it's been better. Don't ever get bangs if you don't already have them! It's taken me a year and a half to grow them out and they're barely past my chin!

Thanks for the warning. I am drawn to those long side bangs. So many chicks looks so chic and hip in those. Then I have to remind myself that those people usually have thinner, straighter hair than me. I love this type of bang as well:

That is a really cute look....my hair is thin and straight too but I had so much trouble keeping bangs looking decent and not like a mop hanging in my eyes.

I also wear bangs to hide forehead wrinkles...

Oh thank god I'm not the only one who gets their hair cut once in a blue moon. I have a lazy tendency to go six months in between chops, and I sometimes worry that I've gone a bit feral on the whole personal grooming front. The family of greenfinches that have started nesting in there don't help, either.

Well, I say it's because I'm lazy, but in truth it's because I'm cheap. I came back home to England 18 months ago after six years abroad in North America, and I'm still scandalised by the prices here. Getting my hair cut in London - and this is without any fancy stuff, no colouring or highlighting or Uzbek albino nightingale dropping straightening treatments or whatever the hell they're doing these days - costs about £70 once I've added in a tip. Excuse me while I have a small aneurysm.

In Toronto, the same damn cut only costs me a third as much, so I still have enough money left over to buy beer and toilet paper and other worldly essentials. I've been going back to Toronto for weddings and research trips a couple of times a year (thank Ganesh for my dad's airmiles!), so I've been getting it cut when I'm there and letting it get straggly in between.

But it's giving me grief right now. I feel like my hair's weighing me down. I've got to do something, soon. It's time for a new style, but I'm not quite sure what I want to do. What I'd really like is to sit in the chair, beam up at the stylist and say helpfully, "I would like the haircut that will change my life and make everything better, please." Sadly, I suspect there is no such cut out there. And so the wavy catastrophe persists.

Still. At least I've got the greenfinches for company.

Holy cow, I thought my $60.00 dollars was bad. Thank goodness for your Canadian trips! Though, I do suppose the Greenfinches could pose a customs problem, eh?

All I can think of is "Green Finch and Linnet Bird" from "Sweeney Todd".

After paying NYC and LA prices, I was in shock when I got my hair cut here and with tip (a generous one!) I paid $33!!
In an economic downturn, hair care is the one way people cut back ('scuse the pun ) to save money. The girl who does my color said she doesn't know how she's going to come up with February's rent, and she works two other jobs besides the hairdressing!

NYC hair prices -- for just a cut -- were crazy. That's probably one reason why I was so bad about getting my hair cut when I lived there. Of course, when I moved to NC, I found a place that cost $24 for a cut, and the salon didn't actually allow tipping. I think I'm looking at around €35 now, from what I saw of the prices in the windows at the places I'm considering.

I'd love a new style, but I don't know what I want, nor do I probably want to deal with the work involved to actually style something with an obvious style. I may just continue to put it off until my birthday in early March, which is when I usually seem to break down and get one of my annual cuts.

On a different grooming note ... I had my day made this morning when I checked Facebook and had two friend compliment me on my eyebrows! Between Turnip and another friend of mine, I've been coveting perfect brows like crazy recently and have been working much harder to get mine shaped and maintained and filled in. It paid off! Wooo! Although I suspect I may need to go around with half my face covered by a sweater for people to actually notice them.

I go to the cheapy places so my cuts are usually $20-$25. I don't have a style per se, I just need a straight across trim to the back so I figure why pay for the swanky joints? I always think about new styles but realistically speaking I know I'm pretty lucky to just wash and go. I don't own a blowdryer or brush. (I do have a wide tooth comb and I finger comb by hair) so the thought of having to actually spend time on my hair if I had a new style is fairly unappealing to me.

I never trust anybody to do anything right so I color my own hair with Loreal Feria but my color has been discontinued so after I recovered from my panic attack I purchased a Loreal Preference shade that looks similar. I'm a bit scared to try it out coz I've had many bad experiences with reds winding up raggedy ann red.

Indigo, your eyebrows are lovely! I can never get mine to have a nice arch like that. Cute photo, too!

Well, I won't tell you all how much I pay for a cut and highlights because it's a bit embarrassing, but it's also why I don't get it done more than twice a year, so I've been known to walk around with horribly grown-out roots for long periods of time. I should probably start coloring it myself.

Indy, great pic, with beautiful, expressive eyebrows!

SW, I've never done my own color (without color, I'm truly, totally gray), but I know my shade: Schwarzkopf's the brand, and if you decide to get it done at a salon, I'll tell you my color, whch is a pretty good red (I can identify with your fear of reds!!! ).
Good luck with the Loreal - I hate that they change color products on us!

It quacks me up that I only ever get to see Indy one facial feature at a time. She carefully reveals them like pieces of a puzzle, a mouth here, an eyebrow there. You are beyond adorable, oh golden-haired one.

Wolfie, I tried to go red with one of those at-home kits many, many years ago, but I ended up frying my hair. The colour was fine, but the texture made me very, very sad. I'm quite tactile, and the rough feeling of my hair was not at all pleasing. So I've been scared off of those boxed hair dyes, even though I look at them longingly in the shop. But maybe when I win the lottery, I'll be able to prance into a salon and come out with the most beautiful silky strawberry-blonde locks. I live in hope.

I've always colored my own hair and never had any trouble with it, although I'm not going drastically different from my real color. I'm just a bit more dishwatery blond nowadays than I would prefer to be, so I color. I used to use L'Oreal all the time, but I tried the Schwarzkopf brand when I moved here and I quite like it.

I think my hair stands up well to just about anything, though. I've dyed my hair auburn, black and purple at various points in my early 20s and then stripped the color out to go back to blond and my hair bounced back without trouble. For which I am eternally grateful!

Home dyeing is cheap and easy. The only trouble I encountered was the couple of times when I actually paid to have it done. I went through a platinum blonde phase in high school and went to an Astor Place salon to have it done once and I had little painful scabs all over my scalp and I looked like an albino.

My natural hair color is fairly close to the color I dye it too which is why with the Loreal Light Reddish Blonde I got a good result. Even if I missed a few pieces it's okay coz it looks like natural highlights.

Speaking of the platinum blonde phase, my hair was to the middle of my back and had been been bleached for ages when I decided to put temporary black on top of it. When I washed it the black came out but my hair was stained green and purple (the base colors of black, so a stylist later told me, my hair was so dry and porous the base colors clung to it). I did this while living abroad and when my aunt picked me up at the airport when I returned home she couldn't believe her eyes. Not only did I have long purple, platinum and green hair but I had put on about 10 lbs (I had never been one to gain weight previously or since - the English diet of Cadbury, jacket potatos and Guinness worked it's magic on me) and I had zits all over my normally clear complected face. She still busts me about what a sight I was. Anyway, when I got home I got a bob just so I could get rid of all the dead, discolored hair and I let my natural color grow in. I've been off blonde ever since.

I too have cut back on hair care becuase I'm cheap. It's not so expensive where I live but business hasn't been great and that's a logical place for me to cut back. I started coloring at home. I only lighten my hair half a shade and don't usually need it done more than once every 10 weeks or so. The color is really good but I feel like it's really drying my hair out. And Who can tell because I need a cut so badly that it could just be my plain ole hair being dried out and full of split ends. I'm going to try to nail down my stylist this week. I'm home and I THINK that she's home which will be the first time in more than a month that we are home at the same time. (Both of our husbands are musicians and we travel to be with them on the road).