Dreading Dreads

As a few of my friends know from my flailing on facebook I decided that I'm going to wear a wig for Empire. In the last LARP I did I was a completely normal human (with a fantastic skyship) so this time I thought I'd play something a little different. I was looking at the lineages and the one that stood out to me the most was the Merrow. Looking at the pictures on the wiki entry I pondered on potential costume options and was struck by the idea of naturally blue hair as one of my characters physical quirks.

Profound Decisions are lovely people willing to work with their player base so I sent them an email to check this would be alright. I received an email back giving me the go ahead and I was a happy bunny! It even got added to the wiki as a rare trapping some Merrow have, along with a picture of the wig I sent them to give them an idea of what I was after (pictured on the left), so I'm responsible for the first official minor trapping for a lineage, go me!

As I plan to play a Navarri character I decided that when my wig arrived I should make it more appropriate to my nation who are big on things like beads, braiding and dreadlocks. I decided to go with dreads.

I could have gone for roving dreads but I don't have anyone to put them into my hair for me and I wanted my dreads to look like they were made from actual hair so attacking a cosplay wig it was. I got really cold feet over the idea so I ordered a second wig in case I made an utter mess before I got to work.

Following an instructional video found on knotty boy I learned to dreadlock hair (and how to break a few cheap combs in the process). Dreadlocking takes hours and without anything to put my wig onto as I worked I mostly had to flip the thing back and forth as I went. To save me going nuts I did the dreads in batches while watching TV over the space of a few days.

As I got halfway through my task I realised that by clumping the hair together I was exposing more of the net of the wig and I was running the risk of making it ridiculously obvious I was wearing a wig. So on the top layer of dreads I've left them a little loose, the dreads starting partway down the strands to give hair at the top of the head to still cover gaps.

Here are my dreads so far:

Apologies for the dire photo, it was starting to get dark and getting enough light to stop the flash going off and overexposing everything was a nightmare! You get the general idea though, I'm tying all the dreads back using the longest 2 dreads as that makes it easier to cover thinner spots over the scalp. At least the colours are pretty!

Next step for my dreadlocked wig is thickening it out just a smidge with some yarn, wrapping sections of it in coloured thread and adding all sorts of charms, beads and other goodies to add more character to it and hopefully make it feel less like a wig and more like somebody's naturally blue hair that's been styled in a suitably Navarri style.