Medium mining. Make it worth my while?

My main DoH is leatherworking atm and I need a lot of Alumen. So I took mining and started farming it once it became available. I heard though, that for future recipies in LW I need black Alumen (of something of the sorts). This was gathered from lvl 35 mining spots from what I know. That means I need to gain at least 10/15 lvls in mining. My question is, what is the best option for now.
1. Do levemete's to level it up and earn some money.
2. Just gather stuff over and over, sell the mats on the market?
3. A combination of the above.

Im not gonna bother with mining once I get my black Alumen untill I perhaps need something else (eventually I want all DOH/L maxxed but I have more stuff to do).
If I am just gonne mine the entire time, what are the most profitable ores to gather?
Thanks in advance for your advice!

I started out with leves, I don't think anything really beats them as far as EXP gained for Mining. But eventually I ran out of allowances, honestly though, if you get a good rotation going EXP through straight Mining isn't that bad. I did 200k~ EXP in about an hour yesterday grinding mining points in Sangoli Desert.

Alumen should be very cheap from the market place as there's no better material to mine at that level. Stock up during the inflation.

I need the Alumen myself though. So I guess option 3 is the best.
However, farming alumen till lvl 30/35 doesn't seem efficient, exp and craft wise. Are there any ores/items that I should try to get from lvl 25/30 nodes to sell?