not sure why iron daggers have won everyone over as the fastest way to level up smithing... why is leather so overlooked?

you need iron ingot and leather strips for dagger, which means you have to find 2 items.you only need leather and strips for leather bracers and i think its boots, since you can turn leather into strips you only really need to obtain and huge amount of leather. (which i believe is cheaper than iron ingots too)

blacksmiths usually always have leather and strips, i found it much quicker just make a bunch of leather stuff rather then searching for ingots

Buy the house in Whiterun, marry and have your wife/husband move there, go take the warrior stone sign, have a rest at home and go smith stuff then and only then.

on the pc i added a smithing mod that allows me to make lockpicks...1 iron ingot per set of lock picks. Before the mod i did the iron daggers or leather stuff and upgraded everything i could haul back.

But at the fastest, you'll still be running all over Whiterun to get this done. Plus, improving an item barely moves the bar at all, whereas simply creating a new item vastly moves the bar forward.

On the topic of Iron Daggers vs. Leather Bracers, I always choose the Leather Bracers. It is much, much cheaper to go with Leather as you can make the other ingredient (Leather Strips) from the Leather itself. If you go with Iron Daggers, you still need to buy Iron Ingots which are vastly more expensive to get the same amount you need to create enough Daggers to make it worth your while.

Leather Bracers are easier, cheaper, and over-all better to produce than Iron Daggers. I wouldn't even woryy about enchanting them unless two prerequisites are filled. 1) You have a mono[oly on the Petty Soul Gem market. 2) You really need to raise your Enchanting Skill. While the money is nice, you are still going to be taking a tour of all of Skyrims forges if you are wanting to get your Smithing Skill to 100 in as little time as possible. Otherwise you will be waiting for an eternity for the Blacksmiths to restock Leather and Leather Strips.

Just make iron daggers, the part that took me the longest would be getting the iron ignots. lol.

Use the Warrior Stone and get married so you can have Lover's Comfort at the same time, which increases your leveling speed by 35%. Ancient Knowledge is supposed to boost you another 15% but it's bugged so don't bother.

Of the three ways of boosting your skill (forging, tempering, training), paying for training is the fastest, but get super expensive. Forging is faster than tempering and it is pretty affordable, so that is what I would recommend. To go from 15 to 100 skill, you need to craft 415 Iron Daggers (I counted), so buy as much/many Iron Ore/Ingots as you possible can. Collect pelts/leather/strips as well, but try to avoid buying them. When you get to 95, to save on materials, you could go collect the 5 skill books. Two easy ones are:

1. "Light Armor Forging" in Embershard Mine (near Riverwood)
2. "The Armorer's Challenge" at the Skyforge

For the rest:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Skill_Books

Buy the spell "Soul Trap" and buy as many petty soul gems as possible. Learn as many enchantments as possible. make as many iron daggers as you can, and enchant them and sell them. They're a gold mine. Don't forget to join the Thieves Guild to get the Thieve's Guild armor and get an amulet of Diabella. Dress for success with vendors to max gold. And eventually you'll find a pair of bracers of extreme smithing --- KEEP THESE.

This the petty souls from small animals can have you turning a profit real quick. You may eventual find yourself making enough money you can afford to buy a few already filled gems just to level the enchanting faster.

Why even bother buying leather from the blacksmiths? Just go take a little stroll outside of any city - it won't be long before you're all but overburdened with various animal pelts that can be turned into leather at the nearest tanning rack.