I've gotten over that theory I had about having multiple adjacent poles, it seems to be a very common practice.  I am trying to get my head around exactly what to expect when you use spin edge (as my modeler implements it) - seems a lot like a puzzle game, you can shift a triangle around or move poles or whatever, in addition to adjusting poly flow.  I am getting to the point where I can look at geometry and see edge loops, that is helping.  I guess you just need to bang on it and do it a while before it starts to internalize.  I am still looking for example meshes that are considered good topology though (this excludes any Poser figure models obviously).

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