Are they a very fine cotton, or is it more like a man's item? No problem with the J monogram. My great aunt Josephine was the source of a lot of the hankies I've used for ages that are on their last legs. Let me know what they cost and the postage. Do you do PayPal?

I love that site about clothes lines--I'll have to look into that more. I think I put photos up before--here is a closeup of the hardware I engineered for my lines. Here is the line with Poppy the catahoula in the foreground. You can see that I positioned the line strategically. Most of the line is near the fence so there isn't a lot of my laundry on view at any time. The yard has cyclone fencing around about the back 3/5 of the yard, but the only view in comes on this side you can see. The rest is woods and fields. I usually hang towels over on the far line nearest the end of the wood fence, so someone on the road across the creek and past the next door neighbor's yard sees towels. I have four lines and I usually hang underwear on a middle line with towels or sheets on either side so while they may hang at somewhat different heights due to stretching under weight, it tends to be lost in the mix and isn't visible from the road. There may have been underwear on the line when I took this photo, but it isn't apparent.

Those plastic bottles on the lines are where I store my extra clothespins. I poked holes in the bottom and cut an opening in the top and I cut the handle down low and slip it over the line. I could have taken the line down and slipped the end of the rope through, but I wanted to be able to move it anywhere if I want. I use these because the inexpensive "cloth" bags for clothespins deteriorate quickly in the sun. This allows me to recycle the plastic.

I have a plan to weatherise the lines. I will cover the cedar boards with plastic and staple or tape it into place. Before coiling the cords I'll wipe down each with a damp cloth and will gather all of the pins in their containers. I'll coil them in on one end, but depending on weather, I may set it up so I can stretch out one of them for occasional rug drying, etc. I think the only months I won't dry outside much are probably January and February.

Hanging clothes is a ritual I remember from my earliest childhood. Mom used lines like mine, multiple lines from metal poles, in our back yard in West Seattle. We had a clothes line at our cabin in the woods near the Canadian border at Lake Whatcom. We didn't have one in the house we moved to later in Everett because there wasn't one built, or she'd have probably continued to dry that way. In the Seattle house we also had lines in the basement from the unfinished ceiling. In that same house she used to hang up tomato plants to let them continue to ripen after the first frost.

Ah, the good old days!