Saturday, September 1, 2012

A trip underground with a Sewasaurus Rex



Hey look....it's Cindy from Cation Designs and me at my favourite fabric store!! When Cindy contacted me and said she would be coming to Edinburgh, I was so excited.  You see I'm obsessed with inspired by all of Cindy's creations.  There's the superman dress, the cat's pyjamas, the Sewasaurus Rex t-shirt, the Retro Star Wars dress, the My Girl on Fire Dress from the Hunger Games...and the list goes on and on.


Let me tell you, we had a blast!  Cindy is just the nicest person--with a fantastic sense of humour.  We met up for lunch (the four of us!!) at one of my favourite restaurants, then we went and scoured all the fabric lovelies at Edinburgh Fabrics.  Then we headed underground to see Mary King's Close.  'Closes' (or alleys/streets coming off the Royal Mile) were often named after the most prominent citizen living on the close.  Mary King was a prominent businesswoman in the 1600’s.  Apparently, she traded in fabrics and sewed for a living!  How neat is that?  I believe it's the only close named after a woman as it was highly unusual at that time, indicating Mary’s high standing in the town (and her sewing entrepreneurship!).

Model of the underground close

So how did it come to be underground?  Like most underground portion of cities, they thought it would serve as a good foundation. It was buried under another building--the Royal Exchange!


It was neat to see the underground neighbourhood.  One room even had the original 16th century plaster still on the walls! We walked around led by costumed guides, heard a ghost story from the time period, witnessed victims of the plague, and even got our picture taken by an infrared camera.  When we got the picture, we noticed an ominous figure in the background:


EEP!  Doesn't that look like a ghost???  I'm pretty sure it was another costumed guide....but....what if it wasn't??  Maybe it was the real Mary King try to reach out to her fellow seamstresses!

What do you think?  Do you have any ghost stories??  I want to hear them!!

SHARE:

12 comments

  1. I love your new haircut.  It is very becoming!

    ReplyDelete
  2. ayyyyyy - I know that fabric store - it saved me from a fate worse than death (mostly matching brocade to go with my MOTB) outfit so that I could make myself a hat for my daughter's wedding. As for Mary King - I have to admit that I completely chickened out in terms of going down into her close. Seriously. I'm not one of those 'I see dead people' folks but there is certainly enough to see in Edinburgh without going underground and going through that!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. There are alot of orbs in your picture, too! Very cool.

    I live in an older house in the US and a few weird things have happened here. Once, when my brother came to visit, he was watching TV, I was in the other room, when all of a sudden lights and TV went off by itself.

    Another time I kept seeing an orange cat walk by one of the doorways in the house. And my sister-in-law saw the same cat as well at another time when she was visiting.

    When we first moved into the house, I slept in one of the rooms upstairs and was awoken by someone slapping me in the face. Come to find out, the previous owner said that the same thing happened to his girlfriend one time, too.

    But the scariest tale is when I was woken up by what sounded like someone pacing back and forth in my kitchen. The floor would creak with each 'step' and I honestly thought I had an intruder in the house. After awhile it stopped - and no I did not get up to investigate!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very cool :)  And fun on your 'ghost' :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I spy your new do!! How exciting you got to see this underground section I have heard of this and am really intrigued by it. Oh yes probably a lot of ghosts down in there. 

    ReplyDelete
  6. Debi_myhappysewingplaceSeptember 02, 2012 8:46 AM

    Wow...definitely sounds like that house was haunted! Did you sort of get used to it? Or did it always keep you on edge?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Debi_myhappysewingplaceSeptember 02, 2012 8:47 AM

    Thanks so much!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Debi_myhappysewingplaceSeptember 02, 2012 8:47 AM

    Thanks Nan!

    ReplyDelete
  9. YEAH!  Sounds like such a good time!  I love Mary King's Close!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thanks so much! I really enjoy reading all your posts, whether they include sewing, history or a travel guide. Loved the Macbeth piece - would never have known of it otherwise, and that's some great atmosphere you managed to capture! I hope to visit Edinburgh one day; ít's a city on my wish list. Don't you have the Grey Friar's graveyard with some serious ghosting there? Or am I confused with another city?
    Yours, I don't think so. She's too solid and she reflects the light, but I'm sure there are many more.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Sounds like a great time ! I've heard ghost stories about our 100 years old summerhouse, my grandpa and his family lived there a long time. I've heard that my grandpa's brother who went missing during the war in 40s (they never found the body), returned back home, some says because he didn't realised he was dead. My grandpa heard often steps behind him and my father saw a figure standing on the cowhouse's door, wearing like an old uniform they used to wear in Finnish infantry during the war. But my mom says there are no ghosts anymore in the house. But who knows.. :)

    ReplyDelete

I read each and every comment--thank you so much!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
MINIMAL BLOGGER TEMPLATES BY pipdig