I finally figured out the mirror trick from that Blender class at the Austin library
Sat through a free intro workshop at the Austin central library last Saturday and the guy showed us to just use a mirror modifier on half the mesh instead of trying to model both sides by hand, which saved me like 2 hours on a dumb little coffee mug, so what free beginner resources have you all actually found in person instead of on YouTube?
Small correction on the mirror modifier thing: it doesn't actually save you modeling time on something like a coffee mug unless you've got a real seam down the middle. A mug is a cylinder, so if you mirror it you end up with two halves that have to be merged at the join, and if the shape isn't perfectly even on both sides you get a weird crease where they meet. The modifier is great for stuff like a character face or a car body where the left and right really are the same. For a round object you're better off using a screw or spin tool, or just extruding around a circle. The library class sounds solid though, what part of town is that one in?