Ahaha very belated, since I went off to knit to try to figure out how I was doing it, and then just ended up continuing to knit...

I'm not quite sure how to pull the left needle back. I can get the stitch off the left needle by tugging it off with the right needle, but I still need to apply some pushback to the left needle to adjust the remaining stitches upwards. (I usually do it by grasping the left needle and pushing back, instead of pushing back on the point itself -- or well, did, until I read the techknitting article!)