I love British humour. Especially its use of puns is something that always gets me. Sadly, most of these jokes are hard to translate into Dutch, making some of the puns impossible to understand if you’re not all that versed in the English language.
I always thought this was something mostly done by the British, until I came upon the crochet patterns of DenDennis, a Dutch amigurumist. He has been able to capture some almost ancient Dutch words in crochet, with an amazing sense of humour. In this post, I will try to convey three of them.
First up is ‘Snotaap’:
The word Snotaap can be literally translated to Booger/ Snot Monkey. It’s a word that is mostly used for children that are a bit rude or cheeky (I believe ‘Cheeky Monkey’ is a term that is used in English). DenDennis decided to actually design a monkey with some snot hanging out of its nose.
Then there is ‘Sloddervos’:
Sloddervos (as literally as possible translated: Sloppy Fox) is the term we use for people who are a bit chaotic and don’t neatly put away their things. They will usually have a lot of stuff lying around their house or room and will most of the time have a hard time finding items. I’m not entirely sure what the English term for someone like that is. The one that comes to mind is a pack rat or hoarder, but then again, those people usually also collect a lot of items, which isn’t necessarily the case with a Sloddervos. The amigurumi that fits this description is, of course, a little fox composed out of some different colours and with little patches sewn onto its body.
And lastly, there is my personal favourite: ‘Ouwe Taart’
Ouwe Taart (literally: Old Cake) is a term the Dutch use as a bit of an insult to elderly women. Old hag or old biddy (which is a little less offensive) are the terms that I can think of when trying to find the English equivalent. DenDennis brilliantly translated this term into amigurumi by basically making a grandma that is dressed up as a fruit cake.
There are many more great amigurumi puns in DenDennis’ two books: ‘Prettig Gestoorde Amigurumi’s’ (Totally Insane Amigurumi’s) and ‘DenDennis Viert Feest’ (DenDennis Has a Party) which are both available in Dutch and German (the second one is scheduled for release on the first of August) but sadly, not in English. Hopefully, in the future, these patterns will be translated so that more of the world will get to know a little bit of our Dutch puns. Because frankly, I wouldn’t want the world to live without amigurumi’s such as ‘Partypooper’, ‘Pakezel’, ‘Kletsmajoor’, ‘Soepkip’ and many, many more.
Edit: shortly after posting I got a message from DenDennis stating that he does have his characters and patterns from the first book translated to English, but that he is still looking for an international publisher to publish the books in English. So if you happen to know of such a publisher, don’t hesitate to point them in the direction of this great Dutch designer!
In the meantime, you can surely enjoy other patterns from DenDennis. He has several free patterns and some paid, which can all be found through his website.
Cheers, Lydia
PS: I know I have not posted anything for a long time. A lot of things have been going on and I simply haven’t had the time, energy or inspiration to update. If you want to know what’s on my hook, give my FaceBook page a like. Here you will regularly find pictures of recent projects ^_^