When you were first new to blender did you use the beginners tutorials? Can you point to some good tutorials? So far I've made a castle...LOL!

Thanks,
Micheál

Try this:
http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlI/
http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlII/

Try everything, touch everything , experiment, ask the forums, the more you try blender the more you'll love it, I'm just a beginer, and I came to blender searching a good rendering engine, and the true is the lighting, materials and rendering features are great, I think modeling features  should be great as well, and then there is a lot more like animation, scripting game development and much more that probably I will never learn.

Attached Link: http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Using_Blender.80.0.html

Excellent! Thanks

Cad é mar atá tú a Mhicheál,

As another relative newbie, I'm finding the following very helpful.

There's a graded classroom tutorial book at:
 http://www.cdschools.org/54223045235521/blank/browse.asp?A=383&BMDRN=2000&BCOB=0&C=55205

and there's also a great graded series of video tuts here:
http://ocw.tufts.edu/Content/28/supplementarymaterial/366743

If you check back through the links, you'll find that the vid tuts are part of a bigger 3D modeling course that includes PDF docs of lessons, and a couple of projects.

Ahhh do I hear an Ulster tongue? Cad as duit a Morphy? I will have a look at these two links look promising!

go raibh maith agat,
Micheál

Haloedrain has quite a nice collection of tutorials
http://haloedrain.ha.funpic.org/blender_links/linklist.php

And from the next link you can reach the users manual,mediawiki's huge list of tutorial links, and the (in)famous Noob To Pro wikibook
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Main_Page

Thanks oldskool!