I'm still working on that head... I had trouble with the UV mapping, too, but I finally got that worked out. Hopefully I will have the textures finished today and I'll PM you a download link!

I think that for the braid, you can get the textures a lot smaller than 1024 without it looking repetitive, assuming that the seams work out okay. A long column of hair like that, if you think about it, really looks pretty much the same all the way down. All the twists and turns mean that you can have even more repetition and no one will notice.

~*I've made it my mission to build Cyberworld, one polygon at a time*~

Watch it happen at my technology blog, Building Cyberworld.