I don’t normally bother my readers with news about the tools of my blogging trade, but because WordPress is going to be implementing a huge — and to my mind, hugely annoying — update called Gutenberg, I have, of necessity, had to devote time to remediating 37 blog posts I had been planning to get to “someday.”

It all began when I logged in to write my blog one night and was greeted by a long, enthusiastic notice from WordPress. It was a good sales pitch and it convinced me I needed to try the plug-in for Gutenberg

Now.

I talked to my tech team, and he agreed to install the plug-in for the “update.”

Truth be told, Gutenberg isn’t really an “update,” it is a massive change.

It is clunky and awkward, but a lot of things are like that when you first start using them, so I persisted. The more I used it, the more I discovered that it had lots of “features” that I considered “bugs,” but nothing that made me think I would abandon the WordPress ship until the fateful moment I tried to remediate one of those 37 blog posts.

It was then I learned that when it comes to older content, Gutenberg isn’t just clunky and awkward — it’s impossible. I thought that maybe there was a workaround I had missed, so I searched for information on the specific problems I was experiencing, and that’s when I found it wasn’t me; it was Gutenberg.

I immediately turned to my tech support crew who fortunately was sitting on a nearby sofa. In a matter of minutes, Gutenberg was uninstalled, and I was back to WordPress as I had known it, but I also realized that my Gutenberg free days were numbered, and I needed to get those blog posts remediated while it was still possible.

So that is what I did this past Friday when I found myself out for a two-hour coffee break. At least that is what I did until the internet at the cafe slowed to a crawl.

The good thing about having a slightly pessimistic nature is that you plan for things to go wrong, and sometimes your efforts are rewarded as mine were on Friday.

When the internet went from zippy to non-functional, I just got out the crochet circles I had made for a future crochet purse and wove in the ends. As it turned out, I even had enough time to weave in the ends of what will be one of the thirteen crochet squares for the future crochet purse:

When I got home, I resumed my remediation efforts because while WordPress has not given a firm date for when they intend to make the “update” mandatory, I know that when that day comes, I will probably be busy with something else, and by then it will be too late.

Then, today, I awoke to just seven posts in need of remediation and shortly before noon, I had them all done, and I was able to turn my full attention to my now 2018 state fair piece.

My progress was modest.

Very modest.

I added this decorative bush/flowers to a gold triangle along the outside edge, tacked down some cherry cola crochet rickrack, and added some zigzag chain stitches in a color I’m not certain I care for:

And as this overview documents, I did make forward progress, even if there wasn’t as much as I would have liked:

As for WordPress, as soon as I have my state fair project completed, I am going to start looking elsewhere because time I have to spend trying to make broken things work is time I don’t have to spend creating content for my readers.