This is just a quick post to say that I smashed through my weekend goal on the sweater. Despite a nice day of running around in a beautiful weather on Saturday, I was only a couple of rows shy of being done the body when I went to bed. That was easily taken care of Sunday morning, at which point the interminable bind-off began. Honestly, I think it took me four hours to bind off (probably not, but that is also not as exaggerated as it sounds).

This was the best I could come up with for photos. Sorry. I’m just going to buckle down and finish it and then wear it, which will make it look more like a cardigan and less like squiggly wool.
The pattern recommends EZ’s sewn bind off and, since I hadn’t tried it before, I figured I’d give it a go (thank you Knitty for the clear instructions). It’s very clever, but holy moly does it take forever. It also eats a lot of yarn and I was briefly worried that I was going to have to join another ball of yarn just to finish the bind off. I made it through though, and the body took almost exactly four skeins of SweetGeorgia Superwash Worsted (there was less than a yard left). Assuming the arms use a skein or so each, this sweater will come in at six skeins, exactly as I first thought. (After finishing the body, I went back and wove in all my ends. For some reason, this is making me feel like a genius.)
And, speaking of arms, although my goal was just to finish the body, I decided to keep trucking and start the arms. I was going to trade in this heavy yarn and return to either Shaelyn or my current socks-in-progress, but dammit, I want this sweater. I’m two thirds finished arm number one, so I would consider this a seriously fruitful knitting weekend.