Here is the drum carder. It's an Ashford. When I first pulled it out of the box, I had only a little, tiny idea about how I was supposed to use it. I had done a little bit of carding at one of the two guild meetings I attended. My first attempts to run some fiber through were rather frustrating.

Fortunately, this past weekend, there was a local fiber festival. One of the free demonstrations was a color blending session using a drum carder. The lady giving the demonstration was using the exact same carder, so she walked me through making a batt.

At the Susan's Fiber booth, Susan was showing people how a burnishing tool improves the smoothness of the batt.

Between the two demonstrations and some hands on work, I now feel much more comfortable with the carder. I'm going to spend some more time this weekend blending some multi-colored batts out of a bunch of solid colored roving samples that I have.