My left-hand-mitten is missing. The green-and-white one that I had received as a birthday present and I had hugged hundreds of times in my hand. It was knitted with care by passionate handicraft tourist, who had bought the STOORSTÅLKA’s yarns from Sapmi. What if it was somewhere covered by wet and heavy snow?  

This article is a story of a pair of green-and-white-mittens. The narrative explores the ways in which handicraft tourism and handicrafts connect people and places, enabling various ways of mental travelling. The article joins the ongoing search of relational ethics in tourism research where agency and relationality are not limited to social lives of humans. Building on previous discussions on Actor-Network-Theory in Tourism studies (van der Duim, Ren & Jóhannesson 2017), we explore how non-human actors can mobilize, spread and entangle stories, emotions, affects and care beyond tourist destinations. By using an autoethnographic approach, we knit, purl and unravel stitches, bringing more understanding about phenomenology, materiality and relationality. Hence, instead of observing handicrafts and tourism from distance, we hold on to the knitting needles and become part of the phenomenon we wish to understand. The theoretical pattern is strengthened by pulling threads through loops between non-representational theory, materiality (Thrift 2005; 2008), new-materialism and matters of care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017) that draw mind and matter, nature and culture into the same arena. These discussions encourage and guide us to go beyond representation and orientate ourselves towards multiple ways of expressing and experiencing care in tourism settings.