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Make your towels come alive

By DAWN CATE
Published April 13, 2005

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I have trouble folding my family's bath towels, so I was apprehensive about going aboard the Carnival Miracle for a hands-on lesson in creating the towel animals so popular aboard many cruise ships.

Cabin stewards create the animals from bath towels, usually posing them on the bed during the turndown service. The animals come in a variety of breeds: elephant, rabbit, stingray, etc. There's even a special version for honeymooners: kissing swans.

There are about 40 Carnival critters in all, and the cabin stewards are always trying to add to the menagerie. The stewards often use props; it's not unusual to see a monkey wearing a passenger's sunglasses as it hangs from the cabin ceiling.

There are so many towel animal lovers aboard Carnival's ships that the cruise line sells miniature, prefolded animals in its onboard shops (the pig is a bestseller). And it recently published Carnival Towel Creations ($12.95, available on the ships), which "offers a visit to the Carnival Towel Animal Farm" and provides step-by-step instructions on making them.

I confess I had an ulterior motive for wanting to learn: If my twin 6-year-old daughters knew that cute, cuddly, towel animals awaited them each evening, bedtime would be a breeze.

Once onboard the Miracle, I met my teacher: Sahaphol, an assistant stateroom steward from Thailand.

After trying for about 15 minutes -- Sahaphol creates each animal in about two minutes -- I had turned a 30- by 50-inch towel into a seal/walrus. A few minutes later, a pup was born. Then I added the finishing touches: blue paper eyes and tusks.

Within another 20 minutes, Sahaphol had created a handful of other animals to show the variety.

As for me, I'll never look at bath towels quite the same.

-- Dawn Cate cate@tampabay.com

Fold your own, get creative (don't throw in the towel)

To start a terrycloth zoo, here are the simple steps for making a seal/walrus:

-- Take a washed towel (Carnival recommends one 30- by 50-inch towel) and lay it on a bed or table, with the short side closest to you. Fold it in half (from short side to short side), then fold it in half a second time.

-- Take the top edges of each side and fold them down until they meet in the middle (in the shape of a triangle).

-- Fold the sides in, so that they meet in the middle, then push the bottom edges back a bit so they resemble the animal's flippers. (The seal's flippers are a bit more spread out than those of the walrus.) Tear pieces of dark paper to create the eyes, and place them on your animal. For the walrus, add tusks, using small rolls of colored paper. To create a pup, repeat the process with a smaller towel.

[Last modified April 11, 2005, 13:08:01]