This is exactly what I was doing. Roughing is now going smoothly.
I've now had about 5 hours of hands on with a local club member at his shop. I don't know how many hours it would have taken me to get to where just the first 2 hours together taught me.
Still have limited time to practice, but now that I got the lathe sand mounted on some "workbench casters", muscling it in and out of its storage spot against the wall is much easier which should facilitate practice.
Doing OK with coves. Beads are still giving me some trouble, but lesson #2 this past weekend helped with that.