getting efficiently stuck

You know how you get those absolutely genius ideas that must must must be done, especially because it's summer vacation? And then you buy the yarn for that genius idea, and you get two sleeves knit for that genius idea, and then you get stuck because you have no idea how to do what you want to do?

Right now, that's me.

I have started my version of The Vow sweater (titled in my head and on my ravelry as Project: Deconstruction) and I have come to an impasse. For a movie, that sweater was not hand knit. Nope, it was probably knit as enormous swathes of fabric and then cut and pieced just like with sewing. So it's beyond simple to just have a sideways knit, seamed raglan. But when you're trying to design a hand knit sweater to match that....it's not so simple. Do I do short rows? Do I just cast-on at the edge to try to emulate the nicely decreased diagonal on the sleeve? 

So far, I have found scads of online how-tos for doing this on a machine, but for someone who is still using the good ol' two sticks (or a circular), I'm still left puzzled. 

(small sigh) I suppose I'll just keep poking around the internet until I find a useful tutorial/pattern/blog post/message in bottle.