I had to totally redo this project and do it my way so it did help me understand curves a bit better but I got lost somewhere along the way. I decided when I went back to redo it I would splurge on the geometry. Is very high in tris =13,910 so I am doubtful I will ever be much of a extremely low poly modeler 
at this point.
The ball joints probably escalate the tri count quite a bit, although I did manually create the interior of the lamp shade rather than using the solidify modifier. After I got over the frustration of not being able to follow along the way Micheal created his lamp and decided to do it my way, I had fun with this. It made me think!
Because I got lost with this project and redid it, I have yet to go back and add an armature. It just didn’t make sense to me to rig it a piece at a time. I am probably going to run into some issues doing it this way but I learn better by actually doing so we will see if I get it rigged or not 
going back through the rigging process.
I am pretty pleased with the way it has turned out so far; however, after looking at the base, I will probably simplify it further, which reduce some of the geometry.
Happy Modeling Everyone!
P.S. This was the inspiration for part of the lamp I created. I think I definitely need to work on my base.
