No I do NOT mean lancet.

Here begins round 1 of mistcloak fabric experimentation!

I used Lanaset (and man, did google's auto-correction irritate me here) acid dye on silk: a 19mm charmeuse, a 12mm satin, and an 8mm flat crepe. I normally use Procion reactive dyes, which can actually be used on protein fibers as well (prepare your fiber in an acid soak rather than a basic soak, and heat-set it), but the problem is that the Procion color card is calibrated for dyeing on cotton; it's reasonably accurate for most plant fibers, but the colors can be wildly off on protein fiber. So I ended up with Lanaset, which is an acid dye (this is much less scary than it sounds. It just means that you pre-soak with vinegar).
First off, preparing different strengths of dye solution:

Here's my bottle of 2% stock solution.


For hand-application of dye to fiber and fabric, usually you lay it all out on a sheet of plastic and wrap it up when you're done, in preparation for steaming or batching (if your dye doesn't need heat, you just give it time to react). Yes, this is my dining room. And yes, my housemates are wonderful.


I thought I'd try spraying on some dye to see what it looked like.

And also put some in cups for brush-painting.

Hrm. The sprayed-on look is... not really what I was going for.

Anyway, this is the 8mm crepe after I've done various things to it - spraying in the far corner, a few different shades of hand applied dye on the rest.

My first shot at hand-applying the dye.


This is the 12mm silk, painted with dye and ready to be rolled up.

At this point I ran out of time and had to go to work, so I rolled them all up and stuffed them in the dye pot until the next day.

Acid dyes generally require two things to fix them to the fiber: acid (unsurprisingly), and heat. Lanaset dye can just be steamed (although if you're immersion-dyeing, you can just heat the whole dyebath). Unfortunately, although I found this lovely pot at Goodwill, the metal colander thing I got to go inside it for the fabric to sit on wouldn't quite fit. Improvisation time!

All wrapped up and starting to get steamy.


You're supposed to wait for it to all cool down to room temperature before rinsing it out. Ahahahaha yeah right.


The really cool thing about Lanaset is that the dyebath exhausts. This means that all of the dye reacts with the fabric, so when you rinse it out, all that should be coming off is some slightly vinegar-y water. Unlike my Procion-dyed bamboo yarn, this did not need EIGHT RINSES. (grr...)


Here's the 19mm charmeuse rinsed off.


Trying to fit all of them onto this drying rack in a way that would allow all of them to dry took some ingenuity. And clothespins.

And now for the moment of truth! (Note: none of this fabric is as blindingly shiny as it seems; the flash on the camera just brings it out. Due to that, it's also a couple shades darker than it looks in photographs.)

8mm crepe:

You can see a little bit of experimentation with the squirt bottles in the middle. I had mostly given up on that technique by then, though.


This stuff is super super light and fine. I hope it does the "curling like the mists" thing; I'm planning on having it as the top layer.


A nice all-over mottled pattern. Not bad.

12mm satin:
This one I did only with foam brushes, and I actually managed to divide up the fabric and remember what I did where instead of just sort of slapping things on to see what happened.

You can see the dividing line right down the middle there...


Closeup of the darkest section.


This is the lightest section...



...and this is the medium-colored section.

19mm charmeuse:
Features of note:

Remember how I said I let it sit wrapped up in plastic overnight? I think some of the patterning here is from being crumpled in the plastic. I'm starting to see the point of the Maiwa Handprint instructions for dyeing with Lanaset - namely, to apply your dye and then let the fabric dry completely before steaming it. At least that way you know your dye isn't going to seep around before you set it. On the other hand, you don't come up with cool things like this by accident.


A heavier application of spray. The lighter areas are from being crumpled in plastic as well.


The entire spray corner, with patches in two different intensities.

The backside of the softer sprayed area - it's hard to see the pattern when the camera flash is making the fabric super shiny. The back side of this fabric is matte, though, so it's easier to see.

The front side of the softer sprayed area. I can't remember exactly, but I think this area involved painting over the spray with a layer of the most dilute dye, and shaving cream. (Yeah, apparently if you spray some shaving cream on top of the dye, you can smoosh it around and soften the edges a bit.) I rather like this effect.