I'm feeling pretty disillusioned with Leatherworking

[Concillian]

The primary use of leatherworking in "end-game" is the mail caster gear for elemental shaman (a very nice 'starter set' much like tailoring) and Drums of Battle for completely maximizing DPS on raid encounters where DPS is critical. Some of the hardcore raiding guilds have had people taking up leatherworking just to get better raid DPS on Brutalis who is a major DPS check even for people with most drops out of Black Temple / Mount Hyjal. They'll rotate their best DPSers around to get them the buff 100% of the time

Neither of these cases should really concern you.

For a healing druid, alchemist's stone isn't bad (alchemy), for feral and balance I don't think there's much that's all that great, maybe engineering for helms? I don't really know how good those are relative to items in Kara and such.

Nether Vortex are now attainable by purchasing from the AH. I had one from raiding, but I bought 3 more for gold to get the T5-level belt crafted for 2 different toons. These just require that you know someone who has the pattern (and I think we have most of them in-guild on Terenas)