Wool Preparation

Today I spent washing second cut wool in ivory soap and rinsing it 3x in warm water. Then I laid it out on a screen to dry in the tack room. I think it would nice to dye White Lace's fiber in blue or red. I also set up the wool carder on the kitchen table to experiment with making batts. I have been watching You Tube videos on drum carding and reading lots of articles on the topic. The videos make the whole process seem quite easy. So of course when I try on my own it is a mess. There are two wheels on my Louet drum carder. The first one is called the Licker wheel and takes up the fiber and, in theory, puts it onto the larger wheel. Well that is not exactly what happened. I tried several different tactics to get the fleece to cooperate. For example I teased the fiber out more before loading it. I used less fiber, or turned the wheel slower. Nothing worked. The fiber just kept working its way onto the licker wheel. I searched the internet and could not find any help. I even called the local yarn/knitting stores to no avail. Hum. I watched the 2 of the videos again to see if I was adding to much fiber in the initial feeding. No. Grr.
On a brighter note, the amount of fiber that did make it to large wheel I deftly pulled through a homemade diz and created my first bit of roving! YeeHa. The diz is in the picture with the roving. I made it from a calcium supplement lid. :)