You Don’t Bring Me Flours…

February 27, 2014

        

I am down to my last cup of gluten-free flour so, Charming and I are making a new batch today.  My basic flour recipe consists of equal parts of sweet white sorghum flour, millet flour, and white rice flour.  This basic flour usually works well in any recipe that I make.  It works well for baking sweet breads, sandwich bread, rolls, as a breading for fried chicken, and almost anything else that calls for gluten-free flour.  Unless a recipe specifically calls for a certain type of flour, I use this as my “go to” mixture. 

I purchase the gluten-free sorghum and millet flour from a store in a nearby town that sells bulk foods.  I just call the store and the manager in the bulk foods section orders it on Monday and it’s ready for me to pick up on Friday.  When I order the flours, I also order a 25-pound bag of gluten-free white rice, which Charming grinds for me in our electric grain mill.  The mill has three settings to choose from:  coarse, bread, and pastry.  We usually use the pastry setting for the rice that we grind.  This produces flour with a light texture and mixes well with the sorghum and millet flours.

The Wonder Mill (this is the brand name, not just something that I call it…like I call my pup, Max the Wonder Dog) that we have is really easy to use.  However, Charming always likes to be in charge of the grinding operation.  He believes this job is best left to him as, in my hands, it could easily turn into yet another “I Love Lucy” episode or worse, an ER episode.  What can I say?  The man knows my capabilities as well as my limitations.  Anyway, the mill’s hopper holds about three cups of rice at a time and makes quick work of grinding the rice into flour.  It took us about ten minutes to grind three pounds of rice.

After we’d ground the rice, I sat my empty flour jar in the kitchen sink (in case of accidental spills) and then alternately added half of the rice flour, half of the sorghum flour, and half of the millet flour.  This fills the jar about halfway.  At this point, the different layers of flour are clearly visible as the rice is white, the millet is pale yellow, and the sorghum is tan.  After capping the jar and then shaking it vigorously to mix the flours, I add the rest of the flour in the same order as before.  This gives me a full jar of about 15 pounds of flour.  Once it’s all in the jar, I cap it again and shake until the contents are completely mixed. 

Working with all of that flour got me into the mood for baking, so I baked some Iced Lemon Sheet Cake.  Look for the recipe under the “Gluten-Free Recipes” tab above.

Charming adds white rice to the Wonder Mill.

The mill automatically pulls in the rice to be ground.

Top half of flour jar with (from top) layers of millet, sorghum, and rice flours.

Completely combined flours turn a warm shade of beige.

Fresh Off The Vine…

February 24, 2014

    

Yesterday I found time to prune the grapevine.  Since the day was fairly warm, I waited until late in the day to do this.  Although the day was warm, the forecast called for the temperature to drop down in the low 30’s last night, so the weather was good for pruning.  I like to prune my grapevine and fruit trees on a day when it’s either warm or not unbearably cold and, ideally, that day would be followed up by a cold night and at least a few cold days afterwards.  The reason for this is that pruning on a fairly warm day allows me to work without freezing my hands off, while the following cold night and days will be cold enough to stop any sap that might possibly flow out of the vine/trees.    

As I pruned the grapevine, I separated the shoots into two piles.  One pile, with the longest vines, I would use to make wreaths.  The other pile of short vines will be cut up into smaller pieces and added to the compost bins.  To make the wreaths, I trimmed the small limbs and twigs from the long vines and then carefully bent the longest one (about ten feet long) to form an “O” shape.  I followed that up by adding more vines and tucking the ends between vines within the circle.  After about five or six vines were added, the wreath was thick enough to be considered finished.  It should be noted that the finished wreath will most likely not be perfectly round.  However, it can be shaped into a more perfect circle by gently bending the finished wreath to conform to shape.  There were enough of the discarded vines to make two wreaths.  I will decorate the wreaths and use them for different holidays throughout the year.  I have three or four of these from previous years, so I can verify that they’ll last for years.

On another note…Over the weekend I also made some gluten-free blackberry sorbet that was really tasty.  Since it’s fairly hard to find a gluten-free ice cream, I make this sorbet instead.  It’s refreshing and, because you’re using berries, you are sneaking some much needed fruit and fiber into your diet.  (People who are on a gluten-free diet need to be sure to add enough fiber to their diet.  This can be done by incorporating fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, nuts, and beans on a regular basis.)  It's also great because it has only three ingredients and is really quick to make.  I’ve added the recipe to the “Gluten-Free Recipes” tab shown above…next to the “Home” tab.

Grapevine after pruning.  (Note the way the trimmed branches on the right are pointing
towards the sky.  I trim off branches that hang "under" the grapevine's canopy
as they would be in the shade where air does not circulate as well.)

Untrimmed vines.

Vines after they've been trimmed, ready to be made into wreaths.
(I leave the curly tendrils on them for added interest.)

A not quite perfectly round wreath, prior to final "shaping".

Heard It Through The Grapevine…

February 20, 2014

Seven years ago, we moved to what I affectionately call our “rundown ranch” house.  It is my goal to see how many fruits and vegetables we can produce on our one-third acre lot.  Almost immediately we tore out an old flower bed and, in its place, Charming built an arbor where we planted a grapevine at the base.  The grapevine is now six years old and the trunk of the vine is about two inches thick. 

In its third year, the grape harvest in September was plentiful.  I made pints and pints of wonderful tasting grape jam.  The following year, the months of April, May, and June were warm and rainy.  My grapes developed small black spots that turned into big black spots and then the grapes just shriveled altogether.  Not knowing what the problem was, I phoned our local Cooperative Extension Office.  I described the spots to the Extension Agent and he immediately diagnosed the problem.  It was a fungus called “black rot” that often occurs during years that are warm, humid, and rainy.  The Agent told me that most people would dig up the vines and start over.  I don’t give up easily on plants, so I asked if there were any other possibilities.  He said the only other alternative was to prune the vine really hard and throw the discarded shoots in the trash.  (It’s not a good idea to try to compost the vines because the fungus will not die during the composting process and, if the compost was used on other plants, the fungus could spread.)

So with determination and my trusty loppers in hand, I cut most of the shoots off the grapevine and even chopped off a couple of yards of the vine’s trunk.  All of the debris went into the trash.  Then I waited for the next year, hoping that the vine would revive.

Wonder of wonders, the next spring the vine’s buds began to swell and leaves, then flowers, and then grapes burst forth on the vine.  The yield that year was not much, but at least the grapes were edible and without spots.  I’m hoping to eventually get back a bountiful harvest.

This weekend, I’m going to give the grapevine its annual hair cut.  I will get rid of any dead wood and cut off new shoots that grew on the underside of the vine.  I’ll trim back the viable shoots that have grown on top; back down to the two or three buds where the new growth will form (the pruned shoot usually measures around 6 inches or so).  The object is to keep as much sunshine and air moving through the vines as possible to prevent black rot.  Shortly after the fruit sets in the spring, I will go back and snip off any excess clusters of grapes from the shoots.  It is best to have only one cluster of grapes per shoot.  This ensures that those grapes get all of the nutrition provided by the shoot and the grapes will be tastier and bigger than if you leave the many clusters on one shoot.

After pruning, I normally fashion the snipped vines into wreaths.  This can be done by simply bending each pruned vine into a circle.  The vines will usually only be five or six feet long, so the ends will need to be tucked within the circle, in between other lengths of the vine.  This way, there is no need to wire or tie the vines together to hold the shape.  Wreaths can be made into different sizes and shapes, based on how much excess vine you have to work with and how much imagination you have.  Next week, I will post pictures of my newly manicured grapevine as well as the resulting wreaths.

Below is how the grapevine currently looks.  Please ignore my un-groomed herb garden in the bed below the grapevine, that’ll be material for a later blog post. 

My long-haired grapevine badly in need of a pruning.

Cuttin’ A Rug…

February 17, 2014

    

When my parents were just a young married couple in the early 1940’s, they lived way back in a “Hollow” in the county where they were born.  At that time, all of the “Hollow” roads were still one-lane, dirt and gravel roads.  Across from their house, there was a long driveway that crossed a stream and went slightly upward, leading to a small, white-washed cabin that was probably at least a hundred years old.  In this cabin lived their neighbor whom they called “Cousin Janie”.  I don’t know if she was really related to them or not, but I do know that they couldn’t have loved and respected her more had she been their real grandmother.

Cousin Janie had gotten married when she was 31-years old.  I am not sure why she waited so long to get married, but I always thought that was a sensible thing to do.  I have a couple of pictures of her when she was young and she was absolutely gorgeous.  When she did get married, it was to a man who was in his early 60’s at the time.  I’m not sure at what age her husband died, but they had three sons.  The sons grew up, raised families of their own and lived productive lives. 

During their time as neighbors, Cousin Janie taught my mother how to bake bread, dry apples on the tin roof of a shed, how to make apple butter using a big black copper-lined kettle and many other useful skills.  Both my mother and Cousin Janie focused their lives on making do with what they had.  When I think of them, I am reminded of the sayings, “when life gives you scraps, make quilts” and “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” because that is just what they did.  They made magical things out of almost nothing.

As the years passed, Momma and Daddy moved several times, but still stayed within the same county.  They maintained the relationship with Cousin Janie and made regular visits to her house.  From the time I was very small, I would go with them on most of those visits.  I remember an overwhelming sense of peace and quiet whenever I was at her house.  As you might imagine, because we had so many children in our family, moments of peace and quiet were a rare thing.  I also grew to love Cousin Janie.  She had sparkling blue eyes and fine silver hair that was always pulled back into a neat little bun and covered with a kerchief-type hat that she had fashioned out of thin cotton fabric.  She also made her own dresses and she usually wore shoes that she had made from wool.  She made the aprons that she wore as well. 

I could write for hours and hours about Cousin Janie and how she shaped, not only my mother, but me as well.  Even though I only saw her on visits, I was in awe of her because it seemed to me that she lived on almost nothing but her own skills.  She cracked black walnuts from the trees that were in her yard and sold them.  She sold dried apples as well.  In addition, she used cast off wool clothing such as men’s trousers and coats to make the most beautiful braided rugs.  Her work on these rugs was legendary in our county and she seemed to be able to sell them as fast as she could make them.

When I was around ten years old, I got up enough nerve to ask her if she would show me how to make them.  (I use the term “got up enough nerve” because, if you were a kid in my family and you went to visit someone, you weren’t allowed to speak unless spoken to.  My parents strictly adhered to the belief that children should be seen and not heard when we were visiting people.  With twelve boisterous children, I guess they had to adopt this rule.  Otherwise, visiting with family and friends would’ve rapidly turned into a series of free-for-alls, rather than the leisurely visits that I remember so fondly.  So, in this instance, I was basically thumbing my nose at our family’s commandment of “If thou art a child, then thou shalt not speak while visiting…unless thou would like thy butt whupped.”)  Cousin Janie patiently showed me the basics of what fabric to use, how to start the rug, how to braid it, and how to connect the braiding together.  I was so excited about what I had learned that I went home and immediately started making my own rug.  When I took my sad looking little oval back to her, she gently gave suggestions on how to improve my next rug such as making the braids a bit tighter, how to prevent the rug from rolling up into a “cup shape”, how to finish the last row properly and most importantly…always add at least a little bit of red somewhere in the rug. 

Cousin Janie lived to be in her 90’s.  She was able to live in her cabin up until a few years before she died.  At that time, she moved in with her son and daughter-in-law.  I have made quite a few braided rugs since she gave me those first lessons.  A few years ago, I even knitted “tubes” (also called “I-cord”) and braided those together.  Below are pictures of my knitted/braided rug as well as a new rug I’ve started that will go in my kitchen after the renovation is finished.  Whenever I work on these rugs, I feel the kindred spirit of Cousin Janie looking over my should and hope that she notices that I do, without fail, put a little bit of red in every rug I make.

 

Knitted and Braided Rug

Knitted and Braided Rug (Close Up)

Oval Braided Rug for Kitchen (Black, Tan, & Dark Red) - Will look nicer as it gets bigger.

Snow Storms and Doomsday Preppers…

February 13, 2014

  

As you’ve probably heard, it’s snowing here in the Southeastern part of the country today.  Although the snow is beautiful to watch, too much of it makes me a bit nervous.  “What if the electricity goes off?  What if we run out of food?  What if the grocery stores run out of food?”  After those kinds of thoughts flit through my mind, it’s a very short leap for my active imagination to jump to the obvious questions…“What if zombies start coming out?” and “Where is the nearest vacant mall or prison where we could set up housekeeping if the zombies start coming out?”  (It should be noted that Charming…and by extension, myself,…are die-hard “Walking Dead” fans, which is probably not a good thing as evidenced by the rest of this post.)  This naturally leads my mind to think of the “Doomsday Preppers” TV show.  Charming and I are not “Doomsday Preppers” who hoard tons of food, water, and small arms just waiting for the “apocalypse”.  In fact, after watching that show, I have serious concerns about the continuation and future of mankind if it will be depending only on that gene pool.  However, something happened a few years ago that did make me decide that it just makes sense to keep some essentials on hand for an emergency. 

About twelve years ago, I moved to a small town about a half hour from where I grew up.  Did I decide to live inside the town limits because it had three grocery stores?  Subconsciously, that may have been a factor, as I really do love food.  Several years back, we had a really deep snow.  As I recall, we got just over a foot of the white, fluffy stuff.  As luck would have it, I had just finished my regular weekly grocery shopping before the storm warning was announced.  Luckily, there was no need to rush back to the store.  So Charming and I were snug and warm in our house with plenty of food to eat, oblivious to the swirl of snow that was piling high outside.  Ahhhh…just like a fairy tale.

As soon as the snow stopped and the road crew had made their first swipe through our neighborhood, Charming decided he needed ice cream from the store.  (I declare, he is the only person I know who “needs” ice cream to survive when, just outside the door, it’s 15 degrees and there are a bazillion ice crystals floating through the air.)  We got into the car and drove to the store.  The store’s parking lot was full, but it had only been partially plowed so I reasoned that perhaps it just “looked” like there were masses of people there.  We went inside, where my “introvert radar” picked up on a certain type of electricity in the air.  Trying to ignore it, Charming and I split up.  He went to get the necessary ice cream and I went to pick up potato chips. 

As I rounded the corner from the fresh produce section, I noticed that the shelves in the meat case were bare and people were buzzing around at a hurried pace.  Hmmm…ignore it.  I walked past the bread aisle; nothing on those shelves. Hmmm…potato chip aisle just up ahead.  No cheese on the dairy shelves and no milk in the milk refrigerators.  I begin to notice a swirl of people and shopping carts moving erratically through the aisles.  I’m a little breathless by now.  Finally, I made it to the snack section.  There was a family of three hunkered down in deep conversation, each had a selection of chips in their hands.  They put them ALL in their shopping cart.  I suddenly felt a rush of panic wash over me…PREPPERS WERE TAKING ALL OF THE CHIPS!  I quickly grabbed three bags of potato chips, (to this day, I don't know why I grabbed three bags) hugged them to my chest, and dodging the zombies (I mean, people), I sprinted to the ice cream section to find Charming.  When I finally caught sight of him halfway down the aisle, I barked at him, “We have GOT to get out of here NOW!”  (I don’t really yell publicly; I prefer to think of it as whispering…loudly.)  Since this incident was “Pre-Gluten-Free” Charming was already used to me urgently screaming this very phrase on the car ride home after various occasions when we had been out to local restaurants for a meal.  (On average, before the gluten-free diet, I had fifteen minutes to get from the restaurant to our home before an urgent “bathroom opportunity” presented itself.)  He grabbed his ice cream and we jostled through the speedy checkout line and hustled to the car.  By the time we pulled into our driveway, my pulse had calmed down a bit. However, I don’t think I’ll ever forget that sense of panic at the lack of food in the grocery store after that snow storm. 

Charming and I have always grown food in our vegetable and herb gardens and preserved that harvest to be used from one year to the next.  We mainly do this because we believe the food we grow is much healthier than what can be bought in the store and we enjoy the connection to the land.  We also shop at Costco for staples like toilet paper, milk and Milk Bones for Max the Wonder Dog, who is a “Prepper”.  (He has an impressive forty-five pound stash.)  However, there is one thing that I learned from that particular winter storm grocery-shopping incident…ALWAYS go buy ice cream and potato chips as soon as a “winter storm watch or warning” is announced!

View from my (new) kitchen window.

Max the Wonder Dog with a face full of snow.

Felted To The Max...

February 10, 2014

Today’s post is a bit shorter than usual.  I figure I did enough rambling in the 2/6/14 post to bore you to tears, so you may be in need of a break.  A few functionary things that some of you may not already know.  For those of you who don’t want to check every day to see if I’ve posted anything, I’m going start posting on Mondays and Thursdays.  This way, you’ll know when to expect it and I won’t become absolutely consumed by it.  Although I know you anxiously await every single post from me and rush home from work to see if I’ve written anything new (ha, ha!), there’s an easier way to get the posts.  You can “follow” my blog via e-mail.  (Groupies!  Yay!)  Here’s how.  While you’re reading my blog, look to the right of the screen where it says “Follow By E-Mail” and submit your e-mail address.  Once you do this, my blog will…through the magic of the internet…automatically be sent to you via e-mail as soon as I publish a post.  That way you won’t miss a minute of the exciting life that is “Virginia Real”.  Also, at the very bottom of the blog, there is a view counter to show how many “Page Views” the blog has had so far.  So you and I will be able to watch my fan base explode.  In addition, I will be adding extra “pages” to the blog.  They look like folder tabs at the top of the blog, just under the “Virginia Real” banner.  So far, I have the “Home” page that shows all of my posts and a “Gluten-Free Recipes” page where I will add some of my favorite gluten-free recipes for those of you who would like them.  I plan to add more pages in the future. Lastly, there is a "Comments" section, shown just below each post, where you can provide feedback on the stuff I write.  I take all criticism as constructive criticism, so feel free to comment.

Below is a picture of a felting experiment that I did about six months ago.  It is based on the likeness of my pup, “Max, the Wonder Dog”.  (Although his head does resemble that of a female lion, I think it’s a fairly decent effort and similar to the way he actually looks.)  In order to get an approximate color of Max’s fur, I carded some natural-colored wool and brown llama fiber with two wooden “carders,” which look like a bigger version of cat slicker brushes.  You don’t always have to card the fiber, but I was trying to get a particular color to match Max’s fur.  Using a few pipe cleaners, I fashioned the “bone structure”.  Then I wrapped pieces of the carded fiber around the pipe cleaners in sections and “felted” them, using a felting needle.  In essence, you just repeatedly and rapidly poke your needle into the felt.  You will soon notice that the fiber takes shape and becomes more compacted.  Adding more fiber as you go and using your imagination, you can felt almost any shape.  Images of pets or people would make lovely Christmas ornaments that would be treasured for years to come.  A word of caution…felting needles are extremely sharp and, if you don’t have extremely good hand-to-eye coordination, it’s easy to use up a box of Band-Aids on the consequences.  Trust me.  I know this to be true.

Spinning A Yarn…

February 6, 2014

I’ve mentioned before that I have a spinning wheel and spin yarn for some of my knitting projects.  I will try spinning any fiber.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a protein fiber (wool, llama, camel, cat, dog, etc) or plant fiber (cotton, silk, paper, etc).  I confess that I’ve even been saving my own hair from my hairbrush.  I keep the hair in a plastic Walmart bag in my bathroom and add to it on a daily basis.  I reason that, should I ever go bald, I can spin it and ply it with elastic thread then knit it into a hat/wig.  However, I am beginning to question the soundness of that reasoning as the hair is morphing into one big ball.  It sort of looks like a gigantic cat got into the bag and hacked…never mind...let’s just say that it’s a lot of hair.

Back to spinning…My spinning wheel is one of my most-prized possessions.  It was a gift from Charming.  It’s not the wheel itself that makes it so special.  It was the extreme amount of effort he expended in order to obtain it.  About five years ago, I was driving by a yard sale in our neighborhood when something on that lawn called my name.  (I don’t normally hear voices…except when I pass by yard sales and thrift shops.)  I immediately slammed on the brakes and pulled my car to a screeching halt in the driveway.  I got out of the car, made a beeline across the yard, gave the spinning wheel a quick once over and asked how much they wanted for it.  Did I think it was worth $20?  Um…heck yeah!  I gave the lady $20, heard a quick story of the wheel’s history, hopped it to my car while balancing its uneven weight on one knee, and ever-so-gently eased it onto the back seat…and properly secured it with the seat belt.

Charming came home that evening and asked, “What is THAT thing?” as if it was something from outer space.  I proudly and breathlessly gushed, “It’s an antique spinning wheel, over a hundred years old, it needs just a little work, which I’m sure you can do, and I got it at a yard sale today for $20!”  (Yet another incident in my life that strangely parallels an episode of “I Love Lucy”…Come to think of it, Charming did get that same sort of bug-eyed look that Ricky had when Lucy told him that she was going to sew her own designer dresses…Aye, aye, aye!)

Truth be told, the spinning wheel did need a lot more work than I realized.  So over the next few months, Charming encouraged me to either buy a brand new one or at the very least get a used one that had been built in the latter part of the 20^th century.  After months of the wheel sitting in the corner of our living room, I finally realized that the wonderful old wheel was not going to be restored and used…at least not by me.  During this time, Charming showed me tons of pictures of new spinning wheels that he’d found online...Schacht, Kromski, Louet, Ashford.  But still I held off on selecting one.  As I’ve said before I’m very frugal, so I couldn’t convince myself that spending $500 - $1,000 for a new spinning wheel was a good idea for a beginning spinner.  Recognizing my cheapness for the disability that it can sometimes be, Charming went to E-bay and found a used Ashford Traditional that had been purchased new by the owner in the 1970’s.  The write-up indicated that it worked perfectly and was being sold because the owner upgraded to a newer model and didn’t have room for both.  Charming sent several e-mails to the seller for more information and then bid on it.  He got the wheel for $300.  However, the wheel was in Nashville, Tennessee.  So, at the crack of dawn one Saturday morning, we loaded the car with a couple of heavy blankets and a cooler full of sandwiches & drinks.  Charming drove straight to Nashville, stopping only for bathroom breaks.  Upon our arrival, we spent a lovely hour with “Barbara” who demonstrated the spinning wheel and accessories, which included an extra flyer, two large bobbins, two small bobbins, a Lazy Kate, instruction manual, and some wool roving.  As I thanked Barbara and promised I’d take good care of her wheel, Charming carefully wrapped it in the blankets and put it in our car.  He drove all the way back to our house where we arrived around midnight.  What a “thunder run”!

Next day, I sat down, anxious to spin.  I had taken several lessons, but those had been several months prior and on a different type of wheel.  Now, I couldn’t seem to get my feet and hands going at the same time.  I had started off smiling, then my brow started to furrow, then I started to sweat, and finally I started to cuss.  I don’t often use bad words…I mainly stick with the phrase that anyone would say when the levy breaks…“Dam it, dam it, dam it!”  The cussing went on for about an hour, then Charming came out of his office, saw my frustration and offered to give me a refresher lesson.  He sat down in my chair and I sat on the floor beside him, telling him how the wheel was supposed to operate.  Within five minutes, he was making yarn.  He was sending that roving through the wheel’s orifice at the same rate he’d use to rip a piece of lumber with a table saw…BUT he was actually spinning a fairly decent yarn.  Feeling somewhat sheepish (pun intended) for letting my frustration get the better of me, I just sat there quietly.  When Charming stopped spinning, he stood up, put his hands gently on my shoulders and simply said, “Patience.”  He then walked back into his office and left me to try it again on my own.  Within fifteen minutes, I was happily spinning away and all was right in with the world…And they lived happily ever after.

Warm and Fuzzy...

February 3, 2014

I believe that God only gives us so many minutes on this earth and I don’t want to waste any of them.  Therefore, I keep a portable knitting or crocheting project on hand for the small amounts of time that I spend riding in a car, waiting for medical appointments or sitting in the local government meetings where I accompany Charming as he badgers the governing body about reigning in their spending of taxpayer money. 

One such project is a multi-colored scarf that I finished this week.  I knitted it out of some of the dozens of miniscule balls of leftover sock yarn that I accumulated over the years and had stashed in a huge Zip-Loc bag in my “Studio”.  (“Studio” sounds so much more artsy and glamorous than “craft room,” so I’ve decided from this point forward to use that term to legitimize my current cluttered workspace where furniture displaced by the kitchen renovation currently resides alongside my sewing machine, serger and spinning wheel.  Also, I’ve consciously decided to refer to myself as a “fiber artist”.  It just sounds so much more impressive than the pale reality of “unemployed crafter”.)

Getting back to the scarf…I used Size 9 knitting needles and cast on 325 stitches.  Each row is knitted in a different color.  As I added each row, I left a tail of approximately 8 inches long and continued knitting to the end of the row where I left another tail of the yarn about 8 inches long.  As I worked, I tied the tails together (two at a time) at the end of the rows.  You could also wait until you finished the scarf and then tie the tails together (again, two at a time) along each edge of the scarf.  The finished dimensions of the scarf are six feet long by six inches wide.  Since the scarf has so many different colors in it, you could effectively use every scrap of yarn you have in your leftover stash.  It wouldn’t even matter if you have to change yarns in the middle of a row because it all blends in and looks pretty no matter what colors you use or in what order you use them. 

Below are pictures of the project mid-way through as well as the finished product.  (I found the lovely blonde model hanging around the house with nothing to do, so I convinced him that scarves look just as good on males as they do on females.  This is his "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful" look.)

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful."