Amare | To Love

Amare is the Italian infinitive of the verb ‘to love’.  Fittingly, this was the first Italian verb I learned to conjugate.  It's fitting because my surname is partially constructed from this very present tense verb.  Amo literally means I love.  Deo means god.  Amodeo.  I love god.  [Edit: I’m an atheist.]  So my surname is both a proper noun and a full sentence, complete with subject, object, tense and verb.  I’m rather proud of the grammatical dexterity tucked neatly into those six little letters. 

In this world of sewing and knitting I describe myself as an amateur, but I don't see this as a pejorative term.  The French meaning of amateur and the Italian amare both stem from the same Latin root, and is a root based in describing forms of love.  In French, amateur literally means 'one who loves, lover'.  So I am a proud amateur—or perhaps amatrice!—in this world of sewing and knitting and making, doing it for the love of putting some strange and disparate shapes together in a way that means they turn into an object of use and beauty: two contrasting and mismatching curves magically become a set in sleeve; a single line (of yarn) becomes a blanket; a present tense verb becomes a metaphor for joy.

Io sono una amatrice; amo fare.