I've never seen a sewing machine that way round, including all the ones in All Saints windows, and the ones at school, including treadles. and it only occurred to me now how odd that is, to use the right hand for power, and the left for the dextrous stuff.

The Aussie shop has a left handed milk pan, lip on the right. Peelers have the blade positions for it to be dragged by the right hand - doesn't apply to the ones with a swivel blade which works both ways.

I've looked up Donuel's suggestion and found this:


Handedness in twins, abstract of paper

This shows that being a twin does not affect handedness, contrary to a lot of sites quoting 20% of twins being lefthanded, rather than 10% of non-twins.

And this:

Older work, different conclusion

But even this does not give a high enough proportion to explain lefties as those who have absorbed twins in pregnancy.

There is discussion of what Donuel says, but it does not seem to support it. Those who state definitely that it is so do not give their evidence - and a sense of a missing person in one's life is not evidence.

Apparently about 25% of identical twins are mirrored twins. about 25% of all twins are identical. Numbers of twins born appears to be somewhere between 1% and 3% (the page gave rates of 1 in x) Thus the possible number of lefthanded twins born is not very great. Unless the number of absorbed twins is huge, the number of lefthanded survivors (equal to the number of righthanded survivors) would be almost unnoticeable. That some lefthanded posters on some sites know from evidence that they had a twin who did not make it (I think I read about three) does not mean that all lefthanders, or even most lefthanders, are surviving twins.

Penny