Coming back from Edinburgh on the train, I was sitting next to a girl who was knitting something very intricate on four slender knitting needles. She was following a pattern so complicated that she had to pause every other stitch and consult it. Eventually I asked what she was doing.

‘I’m making my Mum’s Christmas present’, she replied. ‘It’s a pair of long socks with the opening lines of ‘Beowulf‘ knitted into them. I’ve been at it since May! My Mum loves Beowulf.’ I looked closer and saw that, indeed, the socks were covered with tiny words in Old English script. To make it even more impressive, the basic colour of the socks was a kind of oatmeal, with the tiny letters standing out in a delicate mushroom brown, so the effect was subtle unless you knew what you were seeing.

After I had realised that an artwork was unfolding in front of me, I couldn’t concentrate on my book, but had to keep sneaking a look at the tiny Anglo-Saxon words as they emerged from the gently clicking needles. I don’t remember when I last saw anything so skilful.

I’ve only found one review of my concert last week in Perth with Erich Höbarth, but it’s a lovely one, so I thought I would give the link.  Once again we were so grateful to the several people who travelled long distances to be there.

‘In this second of the series, the supreme level of partnership was maintained, and the plus was that the works were even better…. Hearing this partnership, you could believe that no-one could play these works better, ‘ wrote Ian Stuart-Hunter in the Perthshire Advertiser.

The photo shows Erich and me at the end of our rehearsal.

Yesterday Radio 3’s ‘Building a Library’ feature on CD Review focused on Schumann’s first piano trio, in D minor opus 63. Erica Jeal’s overall recommendation was for a 1958 recording of Emil Gilels, Msistlav Rostropovich and Leonid Kogan, and her choice for the best modern recording was the Florestan Trio. Schumann’s first trio was a piece particularly dear to us in the Florestan Trio.

You can listen again to Erica Jeal’s recommendations here.

‘A widget?’ I hear you ask. No, I didn’t know either.

But it seems that a widget is a clever little package of information, in this case about my book ‘Out of Silence’. Its publisher, Boydell Press, is embracing widgets as a new kind of promotional material. If you click on this link, the wonders of widgets will open before your eyes. By clicking on the little coloured icons along the top of the widget’s homepage, you can read excerpts from the book, look at pictures, listen to a sound clip of me playing the piano, link to social networks, recommend the book to friends, and order the book from the publisher.

I’m off to Scotland for the second concert in my Mozart Series with Erich Hobarth. While I’m there, I’m hoping to visit the newly refurbished Scottish National Portrait Gallery which has been closed for the past two years. It opened again in Edinburgh on December 1.

The Portrait Gallery is in a most attractive old building and always has interesting exhibitions. Moreover, it has a very nice cafe. Before it closed for renovation, the cafe used to serve delightful cheese scones, large and golden-brown with a real ‘kick’ of cheese. I missed these scones during the two-year closure, and was worried that they would have disappeared from the menu when the Gallery re-opened. Cheekily, I e-mailed the Gallery’s management team to ask. With perfect politeness they replied that yes, indeed, cheese scones would be back on the menu, and they hoped I would enjoy my visit. They did not reproach me for having my priorities all wrong. I feel this is the mark of a civilised establishment.

I already knew they were civilised. Some years ago I visited the Gallery when I had awful bronchitis. In one of the exhibition rooms I was overtaken by a bout of coughing so bad that I thought I might need medical help. One of the attendants brought me a chair, and quietly cleared the room of visitors. I sat there gradually getting my breath back, watched silently by the famous Scots gazing down at me from their frames.