I spend a good deal of time honing my smithing skills but I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on quick ways to improve one's skills in this regard? I'm at 100 in pickpocketing and 70 in smithing. The funny (or perhaps sad) thing is that I've only mined one mine so far (the one by the black-briar lodge. I suppose my next personal quest will be to explore and mine the many other Skyrim mines.
go get yourself a bunch of iron ingots and leather strips, as many as u can find. Best way is to mine the ore and kill the animals, but if youve got a fair bit of money to waste, warmaidens sells them. make as many iron daggers as u can, it will level up ur smithing relatively fast, took me about an hour or so to get to 100. Then as a bonus u can get some soul gems(any size) and enchant all those daggers with anything u want and sell them for some awesome easy money.