Well, fair enough... I think the wallet needs some UX love in terms of messages, feedback and such. 'Darksend is idle' doesn't mean anything to me...
I'd like to see a simplified flowchart infographic showing what's going on and what stage of the mixing process we're at - with detailed information available (on mouseover maybe?) about what each stage means and reasons why we might be stuck there if we are, etc.

Anyway, thanks for the offer of help, I've emailed over the log file now.