We are Adam and Katherine, a husband and wife team who started Kyloe Creations at the end of 2022. We are both academic scientists (genetics, molecular biology) by profession. Adam developed ME (CFS) a few years ago, which steadily got worse. Despite best efforts to manage the condition and work from home as much as possible, it became impossible to continue the job that was a passion for so long. Katherine still works as an academic, but runs our social media and of course is the primary component of Adam’s care.
Adam has been a creative for much of his life, primarily through his passion for landscape and nature photography. You can see his work as @adamwestphoto on Instagram, X, Vero, 500px, Flickr and he sells his work on Pixels.
However, ME means no more long walks up hills and along coastlines, so the camera tends to stay home too. Like many creatives, Adam’s passion for photography is in the next location and new images he’d like to create. Not being able to get out much does impact your mental health and your enthusiasm for sharing your work.
Adam has tried so many things to understand his condition, improve its management and deal with the immense psychological impact of a living with variable chronic disabling condition and losing the life you had. Engaging in appropriate activities and hobbies can be helpful for people with ME/CFS or chronic pain conditions, as long as they are adapted to the individual’s capabilities and energy levels. These activities can provide a sense of purpose, relaxation, and a distraction from pain or discomfort. This could be a hobby like gardening, baking, writing or indeed photography, but a lack of energy and “brain fog” makes each of these difficult. Adam found jigsaws and building LEGO (in an effort to sell the household stockpile) very helpful. This then developed into crafts, especially working with wood. A chance video about laser engraving struck a chord, so we took the plunge. The beauty of laser engraving these days is you can make so many different things with high quality from your own home. It has become a way of tying together a creative drive with the need to make physical things with my hands, and it also builds on my technical skills and computing know how.
Things have moved on quickly now. We have a home studio with the specialist equipment, workspaces and storage infrastructure to support a small laser crafting business. Besides setting this up, the first few months have been about trying out techniques and materials. You need to really understand a process and where its limitations are before you can develop products that have aesthetic and structural quality. This comes naturally to Adam as it is much like developing protocols in the laboratory. From there we have developed a series of products that we find appealing and are not something you would find in a big box store or at Amazon. We started selling on Etsy, which has gone quite well so far. However, we want to build a community around what we create. The goal is to create things people actually want and inspire others to express their creative side in a world that increasingly takes us away from the people we want to be. We’re excited to see where this venture takes us and who we will meet along the way.
