Hair dye

+Annette has had dyed hair for as long as I've known her - mostly black, but with a coloured section down one side. When we first met it was purple, and then she changed it to red. Recently though, she's had it professionally re-styled so it's now black on top, purple on the right, and grades around the back to bright red on the left!

We've acquired some red and purple hair dye, and since it's not a job Annette can do by herself (not being able to see the back of her own head that easily), it's now fallen on me to do the periodic re-dyeing.

The first time was about a week ago. I found it to be a daunting and somewhat stressful exercise; I'm never at my best when learning new skills, especially ones where you only get one shot and run the risk of major failure.

I've never done much with hair apart from occasionally trim my own, so even the first task was troublesome. We had to divide the coloured hair into six bunches and tie it up to separate it. The little loops we made were like pulling a ponytail through, but only half pulling through the last time ("just like making a bun," advised Maddy, like I'd ever done that before either). The exercise was further complicated because the original dye-job had been done in overlapping diagonal wings to help the colours blend together better.

We had two red and one purple tube of hair dye. Mixing the right colours was probably the easiest part of the exercise! Next though, I had to learn about foils.

One at a time, I had to release the colour-separated hair bunches and thoroughly paint them with hair dye. We had to use squares of aluminium foil to pick up a layer of hair, paint it, then fold it up so it wouldn't splatter dye everywhere and to keep it out of the way while we did the hair underneath. It took a good couple of colour segments before I started to develop a good technique and really get into the swing of it.

After that, my job was done. She sat around for an hour or two with so much foil on her head it looked like she was baking mini-potatoes, then showered and dried it.

We got there in the end, and it turned out pretty well! It was a trial by fire, but at least I know what I'm up for next time she needs a colour boost. I've heard it said that confidence is the memory of past success, so it won't be quite as daunting.