Felting Machine Disaster!

Good news!! I finally sorted out some bits in my room and am now able to sit in front of my felting machine!! Hurrah!! I finally got round to doing it on Thursday and even began to create myself a little felty/ arty space, sticking a few bits up on the wall and putting all my pens and such in a jar next to my machine along with a pile of sketchbooks. I was so happy! It's been such a long time! My intention was to finally begin the felt I had promised to make Anni all those months ago (I'm so glad she is a patient lady!). Before starting that however,  I thought I would quickly make another fruity themed felt like I had intended on doing a while ago. The last couple I made were tiny so I did them by hand but I thought I would try and make a larger one this time that I could use for a keyring, so that I could settle back into the flow of the machine. I decided on a strawberry, took some red wool fibres out of my magic bag of wool, loosened it up slightly and shaped it as much as I could. I put it on the machine, under the needles, lowered the needles down, pressed my foot on the peddle for what was only a matter of seconds and CRUNCH! Three needles had snapped! Bad Times!

I have had a lot of trouble with the needles breaking since I bought the machine. The first five that were in there I put down to being ex-display and there for they had been used and weakened already. But the five that I had in there this time were the brand new ones that came with it so I was rather annoyed. Especially as three went in one go! So I spent about half an hour unscrewing the foot, unscrewing each broken needle, replacing it and screwing it all back together again. I was only able to replace two of the needles because I don't have any more left. But I have used it with only 3 or 4 needles before and it still works fine. So I carried on felting the strawberry.
I was going for maybe 5 minutes and the shape was just starting to come together, when I felt a tug. So I stopped what I was doing and slowing pulled my felt to the side and a huge chunk of it had caught up in the holes underneath the needles and torn out, so it had a hole in the middle of it. I pulled the piece out with some tweezers and had a look inside the machine, cleared out everything that was in there and tried again, but the same thing kept happening, chunks were just being pulled out and getting caught up in the holes! I really don't understand why but my only thought was that it could be that the quality of the needles isn't up to scratch. I'm hoping this is the case because that can be easily sorted but we shall see! I'll keep you posted! But I was very disappointed because I had been waiting so long to use the machine and had only been going a few minutes and now I have to stop until I'm able to get some new needles! Typical!