My wife has this talent for cutting her naturally curly long hair. She takes a shower, washes her hair, and then when its still wet, but somewhat towel dried, she'd bend at the waist and gather her hair into this pony tail. Then she would twist it from the crown down the length of the tail so that it wrapped about the length of the tail. Picture wringing out a towel.
Then she'd pick where she wanted to cut it, depending on how the ends felt. She'd cut in what I describe as a protracted repeat series of W, straight across the bulk of it near its end, but up from where the uneven ends were on the twisted tail itself. Where the hair was a little fat, that is where she'd start to cut her W. From one end, starting at the right, all the way across to the left.
Then she'd let the tail go, stand up and finger style it.
The first time she'd seen her natural curls highlighted at length in decades. When prior to this her stylists would tell her the natural curl wasn't able to come out when they styled it. Because her hair is fine, and when it gets long as naturally curly hair it gets full, rather than curly.
She proved them wrong. She cuts her own hair to this day. And that's been something like five years. Perfect cut every time.
I sat and watched her at it one day from my chair in the sun room. She had it down to an art that she thought up all on her own. Tired of the same excuses for her hair looking more like a wavy box than her real self.
