PD Day

I spent the past two days at an advanced training class for hairdressers, put on by L'Oreal Professional. (I love L'Oreal. They put on the big hairdressing thing in Montreal every year, and for that reason alone they have my relentless support. If they put dog poo in a bottle, I would buy it.) It was a cutting and colour class, where a bunch of people, all dressed in black, learned some new haircutting and colouring techniques, and tried not to look too spazzy doing it. Classes are always fun; you learn new stuff and you realize you usually know more than you thought you did, or at least more than one other person in the room.

Lest you get antsy, we work on mannequin heads, not real people, since it would be difficult to find eleven people with exactly the same hair who would be willing to let a bunch of scissor-wielding enthusiasts loose on their heads.

There were about 11 hairdressers in the class, all very nice, but very quiet. You'd be surprised at how reticent a bunch of normally outgoing and talkative people are when they are off their turf and on their own. (Until you bring out the liquor, and then you can't shut them up for anything. Hairdressers are like sailors on shore leave when the booze comes out.) The experience of the group ranged from less than a year to "longer than some of you have been alive". (That would be me and two other ones.) There were two men in the class, other than the instructor. One guy seemed unfazed by the amount of estrogen in the room, but the other poor young fella was clearly alarmed. When he mentioned that he had never heard of Tom Jones or George Michael, gormlessly mentioning that he never listened to "old kind of music", I was slightly afraid for his personal safety.

Cutting hair isn't difficult. Cutting hair well is. Most haircuts are based on the variations of two or three basic cuts, but this class was a bit more advanced. Here is my "headsheet" on the cut we did on the second day:

Note the blob of colour up in the left hand corner. I'm a bit of a slob.

I can kind of read it, but am having considerable trouble reading some of my handwriting, and also, I used some shorthand in places that I'm sure made sense at the time, but is completely undecipherable now. (What do you think I meant by "2A @ 45° but X to"?) You probably can't tell from the squiggles on the right, but the cut was lovely, and totally going into my repertoire.

I also learned some new colouring techniques. ("you can put one colour on the roots, and a different colour on the ends!""Put more peroxide in so it's not so dark!", "try using pie shaped sections!") All very exciting.

The photo on the left is the final results. (The middle one is the cut from the headsheet.) All the clients were very happy, and tipped lavishly, I might add.

And the best part is, you get to keep the mannequin heads! These mannequins make stunningly excellent Halloween decorations, by the way, and now I have three more of them, which thrills me. The last two years we have dangled them from the tree in our front yard, and scared the snot out of adults and children alike.

Well worth it, I'd say.