1 Month! Lots Of Shrinkage and When and How Should I Retighten?

Yaaay! I've been rocking these twisty/baby locks for a little over a month now and I'm still really stoked about my hair. I play with it ALL the time, I know I shouldn't but I really can't help it-- I feel so free! (^.^) I've been experiencing A LOT of shrinkage, here is a photo of my bangs on day one, they go just past my top lip:

And here's what my bangs look like right now:

Now they go just a bit past the tip of my nose when I stretch them out. My hair is very tightly coiled and I have always experienced lots of shrinkage after washing. Even after blow dry and press it would literally be minutes before I my hair would "turn back"! The shrinkage is kind of irritating and does not to my little bit of length justice but my hair does not like being stretched out or straightened (another reason why I decided to lock) so I'm really excited to continue letting my hair do its thing and see what its going to do next. I'm falling in love with the little curlies at the end of each lock too. I have a head full of them and I have been getting lots of compliments so far. A lady on the bus even asked me if I had Sisterlocks! "No... I did these myself", I replied with a sheepish grin but that is a high compliment in my book. All of the ladies I have seen with Sisterlocks have beautiful locks with very precise parts, I don't think my kitchen handiwork can be put in the same category but I'll accept some positive energy kicked my way any day. A few of the locks in the kitchen have been slipping so over the course of this month, so I have been taking them down and putting them back in until I can properly retighten. 

Which brings me to my next point: How the heck am I going to retighten? 

This question has been haunting my dreams, man. I have been playing around with re-twisting at the root but this never stays and I'm not interested in putting a bunch of product in my hair, so I've decided to interlock. I've been doing a bit of  on research and that latch hook tool looks freakin' scary and big. I've also been looking into the nappylocs tool and watching vids on youtube by some experienced sistas. I have also seen some resourceful and brilliant sistas retighten with a paper clip or those little plastic bead thingies  you get for a dollar at the beauty supply. I've been fooling around with 4 point rotations just using my fingers and no tool and it works! Not that I expected it not to (LOL) but its becoming increasingly apparent that I need some sort of tool to help me retighten so I ordered the nappylocs tool and it should be arriving here shortly. I hope it comes soon because I have some crazy new growth that needs to be tamed! I'm don't think I'll be wait this long between retightenings on a regular basis though.