A method for manually winding a smoking paper includes providing a flat sheet or sleeve of smokable material with a generally rectangular base section and a generally triangular wrapper section defining a dividing line therebetween. The base section has two long and two short sides. The wrapper section has a hypotenuse, a base extending from one short side to the hypotenuse, a first cutoff region at an intersection of the base and hypotenuse and a second cutoff region adjacent the first cutoff region and extending at an acute angle between 5° and 60° relative to the one short side. The wrapper section is manually rolled around the base section into a tube with a progressive spiral winding geometry by initially manually grasping the second cutoff region and then the first cutoff region, reducing local bending stress and facilitating uniform manual rolling of the smokable material without tearing or creasing.