Adventures in Sock Bunning...Or Should I Say Disasters?

Homemade & Store Bought Sock Bun Tools

My interest in this whole “sock bun” craze stems from fear. Are you confused? Are you thinking I’m a mental? To be fair, you’d be right, I am a mental. Regardless, getting back to the fear factor, it’s like this: I’m going camping for ten days. Ten whole days rolling around in the dirt, having fun at the beach, hiking, etc. And I’m psyched! I love the whole wilderness thing. However, in a more practical sense, this is ten whole freaking days sans hair tools. I’m going armed with only shampoo, conditioner, a hairbrush and my cool tartan Puma trucker hat (and maybe a fedora.) This will be a challenge—a great challenge. The one thing in the world that I cannot tolerate is having $#!**% hair. It drives me buck-nutty.

Enter the sock bun. I’ve spent two months contemplating tatty tresses on my vacation and this is the solution I’ve come up with—not that I am claiming it’s my concept! So I now have a week and a half to perfect the technique. I’ll be honest, it’s not going well, but I plod on...

Here’s how it shook down:                                                

Step 1: Acquire sock. This poses a problem right off the bat...I don’t have a ‘spare sock.’ Not a single one. All my socks have mates. Besides, they’re too nice to go cutting toes off! Fine. Next obvious solution is to hit husband’s sock drawer as he’s not much of a sock enthusiast. Proves rather tricky again as I’m in charge of buying his sock s and frankly, they are all pretty cool socks! I dig and I dig and I come up with one pair of contenders. A pair of worn stretched-out tube socks. I deem these worthy of cutting the toes out of. The little smug bastards fail me though. Due to their worn-out state, they lack the elasticity I require for a nice tight rolled up sock. Ugh. My sock roll is a bit pathetic and flaccid. I ignore this and press on, however, because time is a ticking.

Step 2: Watch countless YouTube videos showing all kinds of girls with all kinds of hair demonstrating how to sock bun themselves. They make it look effortless. Brimming with confidence, I bend over, sweep my very long hair into a ponytail at the crown of my skull and reach for my weak excuse of a sock rolly-uppy apparatus. Awkwardly, I make a few attempts to tuck and roll, tuck and roll my hair into this sock. Because of the lack of sock elasticity, my sock roll doesn’t seem to want to naturally invert itself and continuously roll itself over and over again up the length of my hair. Rather, it prefers to perpetually try and unroll itself completely, and loses shape. I engage in an endless struggle between my hair, the sock and my fumbling hands. The sock also retaliates by leaving bloody sock lint wherever it can on my head. My sock has no respect for the glory that is my hair, it would seem. I reattempt this approximately twenty times. As frustrating as it is, I manage somehow to beat the sock into submission and pull it off. I wouldn’t say the final product was seamless, what with the grey sock exposing itself in places on my head, but I grabbed the bobby pins and went about my business. End result is I find the look acceptable and carry on with my day with a flaccid grey sock rolled up in my hair. It feels weird but I kinda like it.

Step 3: a few days pass and I practice each day. This sock of mine still sucks, and I plan to purchase a better pair to cannibalize, but I must press on. Today I try it with wet hair—my end goal—as this is my ultimate plan to be able to just wash my hair while camping, effortlessly throw it up in a sock bun and carry on my day, mayhap releasing it in the evening and being greeted with gorgeous loose waves and curls. If I thought it was hard to roll the hair when it was dry, it’s murder when wet. It’s about day five of wearing this bloody sock. It’s even more stretched out than when I first started. It only gets worse when dampened by my hair. I try, retry, and retry again several times. The result sure isn’t pretty. But it’s passable. Now I wait the million years until it dries. Note to self, I really must get a new sock...

The Final Product: Fast-forward a whole 24 hours. I begin to unroll my hair slowly, noting that my lovely locks are still damp. I mentally shake my fist, cursing my crazy hair and the unfairness of it all. Unroll, unroll, unroll then gently tug my hair out of the ponytail. I am shocked to find that my hair is insane. Absolutely mental, in fact. These aren’t loose waves. My hair is as curly post sock-bunning as it is naturally. And as inconsistent curl-wise, too. Reality dawns that I have just spent an entire day with my hair uncomfortably and messily pulled up into a bloody sock bun (which was useless to sleep in, I might add) and my hair looks pretty much the same as if I hadn’t. I shake out the sillies, tamp down my ire, cease looking in the mirror and wander away to let my hair finally dry.

Conclusion: Sock bunning only works passably well (on my hair) when it’s dry. After it’s been straightened properly. Only then is it smooth, tidy and adorable. I conclude sadly that I am most certainly effed in regards to my camping vacation and will have to Jedi-mind-trick myself into thinking that my hair is perfectly coiffed and pretty. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to allow myself a little time indulging in self-pity [insert ridiculously loud, drawn-out sigh here]...