I figured the pattern was probably pretty flexible, since the yarn I used was a little heavier than what I was really supposed to be using (which probably also explains some of the difficulty I ran into using such tiny needles). And yes, pulling that bit of i-cord through the stitches is much harder than it sounds! It got easier once I figured out I had to loosen the hell out of those two stitches before pulling the i-cord through.

If you do make another one, I'd love to see a photo of how it turns out!