ymca scene - pins

today was the start of building the youth club room for the ymca animation. in my room it was decided that there would be a bowling alley in it.
the first thing i created was the pins. i found a tutorial online http://www.3dm3.com/tutorials/pins.
first of all i started by drawing half of the shape of the pin. i did find this quite hard to do, so i used a plane and put the picture from the website on it, so that i could use the picture to get a better shape.
i then used the lathe tool under the modifiers toolbar, and then a mesh smooth. finally, i had to add the material on to it. i had to use the UV map modifier to arrange the stripe on the pin, i also had to change the size of it.