Frosty, I woudl rather drag items into a workbench and click once rather than sit around and do the little mini crafting game for my 25% chance for skillup.

btw for skillups, gray skills have a base 25% chance for a skill up and i believe yellow items are 75%

as for transmtuing, all tradeskills can make adornments through a recipe book. i cant remember the name of the book for some reason... i just woke up. brain dead.
but either way, those books teach all tradeskill classes to make adornments, however none of the tradeskills can break down items other than transmuters. so basically the goal of transmuters is to get it to max skill and then break stuff down and sell them to other tradeskills who want to make the high end adornments.

edit: Enigmas. I remembered as soon as i hit post. damn it. The transmuting books are called enigmas for other tradeskills.
IE Enigma of the provisioner volume 1
enigma of the armorer volume 1
etc etc