Lv183 Blacksmith Questions...Follow

Yaaay, I finally dinged 183 in Blacksmithing, and I have Level 202 Mining and I'm Lv35 Paladin.

I've visited Thousand Needles and I managed to see a few decent mining points, but from what everyone said, it fell sort of my expectations. I did get a few good ore there, yes, maybe I just wasn't going there at the right time or something, but anyways...

Question #1: When can I start making myself some decent items? I assume one takes up blacksmithing to cut costs a little by making some of the things they can actually use? I can make a Green Iron Hauberk right now, but the materials.. eek. Other than that, there's not much on the list that I'd actually wanna use, as the stuff I'm wearing is already better...

Question #2: Is there any place other than the AH to get some of those decent Blacksmithing plans? Like, Shield Pikes, Spurs, etc? I see one, once in a blue moon on the Auction House, but every darn time I try to bid on one, I get outbid -every single time-. That gets annoying. Especially when the buyer does not set a Buyout price. And if he does, its usually something rediculous like 5g.

Question #3: Why is it, even when I price stuff cheap, half of the time I can never get armor or ore to sell? I'll put it up for 24hrs (and spend like 17-20 silver each item!) and next day, more than 75% of my merchandise gets returned to me even though I priced it less than the competition...

Its getting I hate selling anything at the AH anymore, I waste loads of silver trying to sell stuff that gets returned to me anyways, I should have just sold to NPC... blah.

--Xylia