I'm still at it. I have taken breaks only to eat, sleep and go to work. The rest of the time since the drum carder came has been spent either carding fibers I already had, dyeing new fiber to card in the future, or spinning the batts I just carded. This is so much fun! I predict that I will be out of room to put things by some time next week, because suddenly my neatly condensed roving is becoming giant fluffy clouds that don't fit into their designated box. (Perhaps I need one of those portable storage pods in the driveway.) The learning curve of using this thing is not very steep. Even though I'm sure I could use more tips & tricks from experienced carders, it seems really hard to mess this up. I don't feel like a "beginner" because even the very first batt I made looked beautiful.

I ordered some alpaca fiber from a store on Ebay at a price that I thought was an absolute steal, until I realized the seller was in Canada and I ended up doubling my price with shipping costs. Still a bargain, but far less exciting. Especially since it's not here yet.

Last night I dyed lots of roving. I love "dye-nights." The whole house smells like Kool-Aid which makes my cats high, much in the way that catnip does. So I never get bored waiting for the dye to heat-set because the cats are flopping around and attacking nonexistent bugs. Anyway, among the colors I made were a pale blue-green and beige-brown that I mixed with creamy undyed roving and a bit of metallic copper sparkles. I ended up with WAY more than I expected. At the end of the whole shebang, I have 3 identical batts, each 2.2 ounces/60 grams, just BEGGING to be spun. I will probably end up adding a "spinning fiber" section to the store to "share the wealth" so to speak, since I'll never be able to spin it all at this rate. Here's a shaky picture of one of them:

And here's the Lorna's Laces roving from yesterday spun into their neat little color coordinated balls: