well....since the machine was free....I let my 22 yo son take it apart. Guess What?? It was something so simple to fix. All he had to do was push one piece back into place and now the needle will stay where it is supposed to....left/right/middle. Doing the happy dance now. Cleaned it up while we had it apart also. It certainly seems like a nice little machine and not huge and heave like my old centennial. The centennial is made of some sort of metal and is super heavy to try to move. Free turned out to be so way cool this time. I guess I got lucky :D