While I was socketing my cloak I noticed that I am able while it's being socketed to move it around in my inventory / bank / trade / mail and the socketing process will not cancel (although the item won't get socketed either unless it's moved back to its original spot in your inventory)
I haven't had time to play around with this as I've been very sick the past few days but I'm thinking there might be a way to socket an item and not have the gem actually be placed inside the cloak similar to a D2 socket bug way back when.