The Net and the Knot: On Locking My Hair for Good
There is a kind of magic that only works if you commit to it completely. Not the kind you can undo with a good conditioner and a wide-tooth comb on a bad day — the kind that asks you to sit still for twelve hours, hand your head over to someone else's hands, and trust that what emerges will still, somehow, be you.
On July 18th, my birthday, I did exactly that. I had my hair permanently locked.
I've spent years with a needle in one hand and thread in the other, and it turns out hair isn't so different. A spider doesn't sew her web — she builds a net, strand crossing strand, until what was loose becomes something that holds. That's the crochet method, in the simplest terms I can give you: a tiny hook, pulled through and through, building a net around each section of hair until it has nowhere left to go but together. It locks in place the same way my stitches do — not by force, but by structure.
This is not a wig. It is not a protective style I'll take down in six weeks. This is a four-to-five-year commitment, minimum, and likely a lifelong one after that. I want to talk about what that actually means, what it actually costs, and what I've learned digging into a history that goes back a great deal further than I expected.
Twelve Hours in the Chair
I'll start with the part nobody warns you about enough: it is a process. Mine took roughly twelve hours in the loctician's chair. Not twelve hours spread across a week — twelve hours, start to finish, one sitting.
It is not cheap. It is not painless — there is real pulling involved, the kind that makes your scalp ache by hour six and your patience by hour ten. And it is not fast. Anyone who tells you locking your hair is a quick weekend project is either misinformed or selling something.
What you're paying for, in time and money and a little bit of suffering, is permanence. Once that net is built, it isn't coming back out — not without cutting it out. I thought about that for a long time before I sat in the chair. This is the kind of decision you make with your whole self, not just your hair.
Let's Dispel a Few Myths, Shall We?
I've had the same handful of questions asked of me more times than I can count since July. So let's take them one at a time, the way I wish someone had laid them out for me.
Do you wash them? Yes. As often as I want. This might be the most persistent myth out there — that locked hair is unwashed hair — and it simply isn't true. Regular washing is not just allowed, it's genuinely important for a healthy scalp underneath all that structure.
Do they smell? No. Not if you take care of them, which mostly just means: keep them clean, and let them actually dry. Odor isn't a feature of locked hair — it's a symptom of neglect, same as it would be with any hairstyle.
Can you swim? Yes. Ocean included. I've done it. The salt water didn't undo a single knot.
Are they heavy? Genuinely, yes. This one is true, and I won't pretend otherwise. There is real weight sitting on your head and your neck, and it takes some getting used to. Nobody talks about that part enough either.
Do they need maintenance? Also yes. This isn't a "lock it and forget it" situation — but how that maintenance looks is up to you. You can see a loctician for retightening every few months, or you can learn to do your own root maintenance at home, which is entirely possible, if slower to learn. Doing it yourself costs less, since you're not paying for someone else's chair time, and it can stretch the gap between professional visits out to roughly once a year instead of twice. Either way, it's an ongoing relationship with your own hair, not a one-and-done.
A Thread Older Than the Argument
Here's what I didn't expect going into this: how far back this practice actually reaches, and how many different people, in how many different corners of the world, have arrived at the same idea — that hair, left to its own devices and given time, will bind itself into something permanent.
Locked hair shows up in Egyptian art and on mummified remains dating back roughly 3,500 years. Braided styles across the Sahara go back further still, to around 3000 BCE. Ethiopian Coptic priests known as the Bahatawi wore locs as a mark of devotion before the 5th century CE. Among the Maasai, warriors traditionally wore long, thin locs dyed red with ochre. The Himba women of Namibia and the Mwila women of Angola built their own locked styles using red clay, herbs, and butterfat — practical and sacred at once.
In Hindu tradition, the jaṭā — matted, locked hair — is worn by sadhus and is closely tied to Shiva, who is very often depicted wearing his own. Some Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, the Ngagpas, wear locks as an outward sign of vows rather than shaving their heads. In parts of West Africa, a child born with naturally locked hair is given a name — Dada — and is believed to carry an innate spiritual gift.
And then, of course, there's the Rastafari movement, which is probably what most of us picture first when we hear the word "dreadlocks." It began in 1930s Jamaica, drawing on the Biblical vow of the Nazarite and on images of Ethiopian resistance fighters who refused to cut their hair until their emperor was freed. For Rastafari, locs became — and remain — a spiritual and political statement, not a style choice.
Now, about the Vikings. I went looking for this one specifically, because I'd heard it too, and I wanted to give you the honest answer rather than the fun one. Roman writers described some Norse hair as looking "like snakes," which some historians read as a description of matted or locked hair — and others read as simply long, wild hair that hadn't been touched in a while. There's no archaeological evidence that settles it either way. So: maybe. I'm not going to hand you a fact that isn't quite one. But I like that the question is still open. It means there's more story left to dig into, and I intend to.
As for what we even call this — that's shifted too. "Dreadlocks" likely traces back to Jamaican Creole, either from the Rastafari's own "dread of God," or, in a darker telling, from the word "dreadful," used by horrified observers describing the matted hair of enslaved Africans who survived the Middle Passage with no way to care for it. Given that history, many people today simply say "locs," dropping the word "dread" entirely. Older still is "elflocks" — English folklore's explanation for matted hair, blamed on mischievous elves tangling it while you slept. Shakespeare used the term himself. Other names carry their own histories: jaṭā in Sanskrit, ndjan among Senegal's Baye Fall community, mhotsi in parts of Zimbabwe. One style, a hundred names, a thousand years of people arriving at the same net.
A Song for the Chair
My husband, Kyle, wrote me a song for my birthday — about the locks, about the choice, about the twelve hours in that chair. I won't pretend I didn't nearly cry hearing it the first time. Years together, and he still finds new ways to catch me off guard. It's the kind of gift that took him real time and real care, and I wanted it to go out into the world alongside this post rather than sit quietly in my inbox.
So when this goes live, the song goes with it. You'll be able to listen, and if it moves you the way it moved me, you can pick it up on the Music page — same as always, just enough to say thank you for the time someone poured into it.
And for one week after this goes live — through October 5th — it's yours completely free. Use the code CLAIMTHECROWN at checkout, and while you're there, have a look around the rest of the Music page. There may be more waiting for you than you expected.
Whatever you've got growing, holding, or knotting itself into permanence right now — hair, thread, a habit, a home — I hope it's teaching you as much as this has taught me.
WhichCraft? Studio creates high-end, heirloom-quality embroidery from a very small, very magical studio on wheels. Spooky yet sophisticated. Always made with intention.
Stay Spooky,
Mercy
Made with Love and Magic.
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