Hair Conundrum -- Relax, BKT or Stay Natural

[LovelyBwonderful]

Hey everyone! I'm new here!! Although I've been a LONG time lurker. And I've found myself at a hair crossroads.

I am fully natural, I transitioned my senior year of high school and am now a junior. However, my hair is still only just below my shoulders. My ideal hair would be shoulder length curly and BSL straight. I just think those are the perfect lengths.

I have been wearing my hair straight more and more often and finding that I do prefer straighter, sleeker styles that last longer than a curly do. Also, even though I know it's bad, I like to wear my hair out. All the time.

What I want to know is, what would be the healthiest for my hair:
remain natural even though I feel like my frequent use of the flat iron is the reason I can't seem to retain enough length that I see my hair continously growing

BKT to try out if I could really get rid of my curls since it's (supposedly) temporary and if I love it, continue to do that. I would hope for just looser curls in that case. And there's no way I could afford to go to the salon for this so I would use either Organix 30 days or Nunaat Keratin Treatment that I can get from my local walgreens [any advice on which would be helpful]

relax (although I'd probably texlax) which I would get done at the salon by my trusted stylist

My hair is 3c/4a; straightens easily; CRAZY THICK (which I almost hate since I do my hair myself)
I am leaning more towards BKT because at least if I hate it, it wears off. Even though I never wear wash-n-go I still am totally in love with my curls when I wash my hair. I just feel like if my hair were straight (or straighter) I could do more rollersets etc and achieve sleek looks without feeling like I'm torturing my hair.

Sorry for the long post! looking to you ladies for advice, please help! Thanks in advance!

oh! and I have a blog if you want to check out my hair actually looks like -- http://livewonderfully.blogspot.com --

 

[kinkycurlygurl]

Try pincurling your natural hair with out straightening it first. I do that and it stretches my hair and gives me big loose curls when I want them. I don't use heat at all. I recently found another heatless method you could try for the big loose curls you want. I'm including links below:

Cocoon Curl Set
http://www.longhaircareforum.com/showthread.php?t=609669

Pin Curl Set

http://www.longhaircareforum.com/showthread.php?t=603013

There are pics of my results in both of these threads plus details on how I did each set.

I'm prejudiced in favor of natural hair, but to me, it offers the most versatility.

 

[LovelyBwonderful]

kinkycurlygurl
those cocoon curls look soo interesting, I really want to try them. I'm curious about the roots though. How did you keep your roots smooth? I can never do sets like that because my roots will be crazy curly puffy and thick compared to the rest, when I do twist out I almost always have to do like 20

 

[kinkycurlygurl]

LovelyBwonderful I changed up the way the girl in the video handled the roots. She just left her roots flat. I started my cocoons with a flat twist and turned it into a regular 2 strand twist at the end. Then, I did the cocoon wrap thing. My hair is shorter than the YTer so I looped mine around 1 finger instead of 2 to start the cocoon wrap. If you check the threads you'll find links to pics of my hair in both a pincurl set and a cocoon set. The roots are just fine.