I really like my hairstylist as a person, and I still really like the way she cuts my hair. However, over the past two years, she has become increasingly flaky about cancelling on me. (I had an appointment today, and my kids were actually taking bets this morning about whether or not she'd cancel. She didn't, but did text to ask if I could move the appointment to one hour later, which happened to be fine by me). It has happened five times in a row, and the reason I know this is that we communicate by text, so all I had to do was go back through my text messages to count the cancellations. Plus, she recently moved to the U.S., and has been commuting up to see her clients in Vancouver -- but now she's down to only two days per week up here, which makes scheduling a bit inconvenient.

So I've been thinking of switching stylists for a while. Today's appointment was the kicker; my hair colour is a humorous disaster. (I asked for blond highlights, and what I got was orange). My stylist will certainly fix it if I ask her, but I think I'm ready to move on. How should I handle it? Is there a polite way to break up with your stylist? Should I just stop making appointments with her, or should I phone and give a reason? I don't want to hurt her feelings, but I also have sort of stopped enjoying my hair appointments -- and she really is good at cutting my hair, so I don't want her to think she's bad at it. The colour has been hit and miss, but part of that may be that I don't really understand how hair colour works and I'm not great at communicating what I like. (What I thought I was getting today was warm blond highlights, and the swatch she showed me didn't look ginger -- although tiny swatches are notoriously misleading, as anyone who has chosen a wall colour from a paint chip knows).