Very Personal Fiber Project

A while back, when my daughter took photos of me in my Silk Garden 3-Square Shawl, she was astonished at how old I looked in the pictures compared to how she actually sees me. I took a good look at the pictures and realized that I look just like I expected/wanted to look....as a Wise Old Woman. However, I am not yet very Wise and, at 54, don't really want to look like an Old Woman....I am just a baby crone. SO....I started thinking what has up to now been the unthinkable. I started thinking about coloring my hair.

For years I've joked that my husband and I will wind up looking like Barbara and George Bush. Now that he has been running a gazillion miles a day for a couple of years, he has become svelte and trim, while I have gotten stouter and grayer. The joke was no longer much of a joke. And I wasn't feeling much like laughing.

In any case, I astonished my entire family by announcing that I was contemplating coloring my hair. I believe that no one actually thought I'd go through with it. And I probably wouldn't have, if I didn't have a daughter-in-law, DeAnn, who is an incredibly knowledgeable and artistically talented hair stylist. DeAnn is the lovely mother of the amazing Sophia and she owns her own shop in downtown Terre Haute, The Parlor. I had already let her have her way with my long hair, and she did what I thought was a perfect cut for me. She is very intuitive about my sensibilities, and it still remained longish, but thicker and healthier-looking. Even when I didn't fuss and blow-dry, it dried naturally to my liking.

So I put myself in DeAnn's mega-capable hands and she very thoughtfully came up with several options to deal with the gray fiber growing from my head. After reacting badly to a skin patch sensitivity test to her first product choice, I tried the second and had no reaction. It was a go. And here are the results - after DeAnn artfully mixed two shades from the dark blonde range: Mango and Saffron and highlighted with Honey Blonde.