Sounds like a good plan to me! You could maybe look at a cowl rather than a scarf since they’re shorter projects, a very quick and cursory Ravelry search turned up this one that’s designed to be a sampler of different stitches: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/the-sampler-cowl

I’m sure there are plenty of similar sampler-style scarf patterns too, though 🙂