Because I’m working a fade, there was really no point in waiting to do the sleeves until I finished the body, which might be the usual way to work when a top-down sweater is all one color.
Both sets of sleeve stitches were still on ribbons from working the body, so working with one sleeve at a time, I had to get the held stitches and the stitches from the PCO on two circs.
Round 87 is the biggest moment of the entire project, where I split the sleeve and body stitches and do the underarm cast-ons.
I had decided to duplicate my techniques from bottom-up seamless sweaters as much as possible in this top-down project, and when working bottom-up, I leave the underarm stitches of body and sleeves live for later grafting (weaving, Kitchener stitch), which completes the seamlessness of the FO. On this particular garment, worked with zero ease and in a non-resilient yarn, having seamless underarms should help me put it on and take it off in addition to being much more comfortable in the actual wearing.