Hey BreBre, I don't battle shrinkage but work with it, so I am really gatecrashing this topic but maybe some of my ideas might help you figure out what to do with your hair.
Since my BC, I've only worn twists on my bangs, not all my hair. But I can tell you of when I wore twists all through before BC and even back when my hair was much shorter, I didn't mind the shrinkage because it gave my twists weight. What I would do after twisting dry hair is dunk my head in ACV solution and let it drip dry so the twists would hang down.
Here's my locs look on shrunken twists worn during the weekend at home. I had just washed them and let them drip dry. I LOVED the rugged look!
When I had to go to work, I freshly did the twists, CW-ed and ACV rinsed rinsed them. No leave-in products added. After my hair had drip dried a little and was now damp, I'd put it in rollers. This was done the night before workday. Don't ask me how I slept in those hard things but I did. In the morning, I removed the rollers and found I had created a look that I got a lot of compliments on:
Front view:
When my hair got longer, about shoulder length, leaving it drip dry would have the twists hanging down like this:
Perhaps this is a good time to mention that if I applied anything to my hair, a type of leave in, it would shrink a lot more. A friend of mine applies products to weigh her hair down and stretch it; in my case that move would have the complete opposite effect: shrinkage magnified.
I never tried to fight shrinkage. I just worked with it. If I wanted a "tidier" look, I'd put my twists into pig tails while wet. The sides of the front of my hair is cornrowed to a point because I don't know how to flat twist. Having the front cornrowed helped me be able to wear my hair like Guapa's current do--a style variation from pigtails do:
Doing that on wet hair ensured the ends of the pigtails hung down instead of sticking up and out. An even tidier look would be to braid the ends of the twists so they look like a cornrow coming down and tuck the tail of the cornrow under the base of the pigtails. I've worn that look too, but don't have pics to show. (Sorry
)
Then you've seen
my updo and
my braid-out on twists. The braid-out on twists, besides giving your a twists a new twist
, will also stretch them a touch so the waves don't make them appear shorter than usual. To create it, I cornrowed my damp twists and let them dry in cornrows then undid and wore what looked like a shake and go.
HTH
HTH. I have pics in my fotki if you would like to take a look.
erplexed.
