Brian King, of Seattle, WA, started his dreads at the Knotty Boy Lock Shop & Salon in 2007, so it was only fitting that he came to us to have them dyed all the colours of the rainbow (and then some) as part of his Adopt-a-Lock auction to raise money for Invisible Children.

Invisible Children is an organization working to stop militia groups from kidnapping and forcing Ugandan children to become soldiers in Joseph Kony's rebel war. To bring an end to this travesty, Invisible Children uses social action, creativity and film - one of which Brian watched, then couldn't forget about. He wanted to help, so he used his head - literally - and got creative.

Early July 2009, Brian began auctioning off his 35 dreadlocks online, one at a time. The "winner" of each lock was allowed to chose a dye colour and the option to customize 'their' lock in whatever way they saw fit. Once all the locks had been purchased and the colour-requests were in, Brian made the short trip north to our former Salon where we happily donated nearly 9 hours of time and supplies to bleach and custom colour each of those dreadies for him!

But that's not all. How long Brian had to walk around looking like a box of crayons exploded all over his head depended on how how long the money kept coming in. After about three weeks, Brian finally cut off each of his locks and sent adoption certificates to the winners, a photo of their lock and a personal thank you note.

To make this effort even more successful, Adobe, the company Brian worked for, matched every contribution made, making the grand total raised and sent to Invisible Children a whopping $3,600!! Isn't it incredible what 35 multi-coloured dreadlocks can do?!

Thanks, Brian, for your creative, awesome effort and for letting us be a part of it! To read Brian's account of this process from beginning to end, please visit his blog Adopt-a-Lock.