Gramma’s Bazaar makes for crafty holiday season

More information

• Peggy’s Handmade Chocolates

Artisan: Peggy Moore.

Contact: 360-892-2555.

Learn more at PeggysChocolates.com

• Wood Refined

Artisan: Bill Mahin.

Contact: 360-892-3171.

• Natural Wreaths

Artisan: Bobbie Scott.

Contact: 360-666-0194.

When Peggy Moore took a chocolate-making class at Clark College decades ago, she didn’t imagine she would one day own a chocolate factory in a motor home behind her house.

Moore, owner and chief chocolatier at Peggy’s Handmade Chocolates, was one of more than 130 vendors at Gramma’s Bazaar at Vancouver First Church of God on Saturday. Hundreds of shoppers packed the gym and hallway looking for handmade gifts and decor made of wood, metal, fabric, yarn, glass, gemstones and chocolate.

With Christmas less than six weeks away, the holiday bazaar season is in full swing.

Moore, 61, a lifelong Clark County native, started by making her gourmet chocolates as gifts for friends and family. They were such a hit that she started her chocolate business in 2007 after she retired from Washington State University Vancouver.

Her 22-foot motor home parked behind her house in Orchards is a chocolate factory licensed by the Department of Agriculture. She buys milk, dark and white chocolate in 25-pound bags and tempers the chocolate to the correct temperature.

Her top seller is the sea salt caramel. But her favorites are the Mount Hood chocolates, Moore said while offering samples to passersby.

“The Mount Hood is my own creation,” she said. She sculpts each chocolate, paints it with a chocolate outer layer and then paints the top with white chocolate to simulate snow.

She sells her chocolates at five retail outlets and has a booth at the Vancouver Farmers Market every other week. During bazaar season, she’s busy every weekend.

After working full time making and selling her chocolates, Moore said she’s ready to retire for good. She’s hoping to sell her business.

“It’s a creative outlet, and it tastes really good,” Moore said. “But I’m ready to retire.”

Natural wreaths

Two decades ago when Bobbie Scott was hiking, she started collecting leaves, lichen and acorns. She took them home to figure out what to make with them.

“I’ve always worked with my hands,” said Scott, who studied art at Portland State University.

At home she dried her forest finds in glycerin for three days and then hot-glued them to wire wreath forms.

“I like the whole idea of natural things,” Scott said. “Except for the wreath form, it’s all stuff I’ve found in nature.”

These days, she collects most of her natural materials from her family’s property near Battle Ground Lake. She has been selling her natural wreaths for about 20 years.

“Magnolia, staghorn sumac, maple, yarrow, lichen, twigs,” Scott identified the materials she’d arranged on each wreath on her display board.

She can make five wreaths a day “if I don’t have a life,” she laughed. “You should see the garage. I’m always collecting things.”

Scott, 65, and her husband, Howard Scott, are beekeepers with five hives. At holiday bazaars she also sells honey, her charcoal drawings and soft sculpture chickens.

Wood creations

Bill Mahin held a pen he crafted from ancient oak unearthed from a peat bog in the Fen marshland in England.

“This is 4,000 to 6,000 years old. It’s the oldest wood I have,” said Mahin, a woodworker who sells his wares at holiday bazaars.

Next he held up a black-and-white striped pen made from ebony and holly.

“I found the darkest and lightest wood I could to make that,” he said. “Ebony is my most expensive wood.”

From hickory, myrtlewood, figured maple, spalted maple, cherry, walnut burl, ebony, holly and Hawaiian curly koa, he creates pens in wooden boxes and much more. His table was laden with pocket watches, lidded wooden box of dominoes, jewelry boxes lined with pigskin, rolling pins, seam rippers, key chains and more.

Mahin, 74, first learned woodworking from his grandfather, but mostly, he’s self-taught.

He works with woodworking tools in his garage, but does not call his workspace a wood shop.

“It’s a hobby,” he said. “Something to do to keep busy.”

Mahin retired in 2006 from doing maintenance in a metal fabrication business. Now he spends 20 to 30 hours a week working with wood.

With the assistance of Marilyn Howes, his significant other, he sells his wares at six bazaars a season.

“Last year I did seven bazaars,” he said. “I was tired of it by the end.”

Where does he get his ideas?

“A lot of it comes to me in the night when I’m dreaming,” Mahin said.