It's a bit purple, you're right, but that's an easy fix. 

 

The turning point for me was giving up on running simulations and focusing on exploring the styling tools.  Also, knowing why to create hair groups. 

Basically, you create a new hair group for any major shift in overall direction.  Anything more is overkill, and anything less is creating more hassle for yourself, because selecting guide hairs for editing when you have a ton is hard work if not impossible. 

Figuring out what render settings to tweak, and what lighting settings to tweak, and what object properties to tweak...there's a lot to discern and figure out.   I intend (read: will probably never materialize) to write a detailed summary of how it works so that any newb will understand.  At the moment, I'm still figuring a few things out.  (I haven't given up on Simulating just yet...does anyone know if root stiffness falloff should be low or high to have the falloff be closer to the root?)