Sharing info's a great idea. Not so great to share that you acquired the game before it was officially released
A few suggestions you might want to test\consider as ways for improvement:I've not paid a great amount of attention but my impression is that jewellery massively spikes your smithing unlike iron\leather. At low levels one silver gemmed ring will give you a full level. Maybe the XP earned in smithing relates to the value of the item created?
I smith all the raw resources I 'find' usually leather based. I've found the leather helm\bracers to be the easiest, a 2+1 or 1+2 leather\strips cost. If you hunt around the town you should find a fair few strips, and swiping them helps your stealth skills.
If all you're after is the option to buy more ore, find a decent merchant, quicksave, quit\CTD then restart and continue. The merchants fully restock. Saves having to wait\move towns. Just something I discovered today.
From the UESP Skyrim:Smithing page:
*Smithing will not always make gold and in many cases can cause you to lose coin.
*Creating iron Daggers is by far the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to level smithing. You can reach 100 smithing by simply traveling to every smith in Skyrim, buy all their Leather Strips (though buying Leather and converting it to Leather Strips is cheaper) and Iron Ingots and just build Iron Daggers over and over again. If trying to work very cheaply, leather bracers can be made purely from materials gathered from slain animals.
*When making basic jewlery, it's better to make rings over necklaces. They cost the same to produce and have the same value total, but you get two rings instead of one necklace, giving you twice as many things to enchant to level enchanting and more things to sell to level speech.
I'd probably quibble with the rings better than necklaces. Depends what gems you have.
I'm not sure about the times, but it seems to be after a week they'll also restock their houses, so you can go and get some more ingots. Smithing is also a good way to 'fence' your stolen materials if you aren't a member of the thieves guild, as your created item is obviously no longer listed as stolen.