I have healed my machine. Healed, I say. I opened the end and started looking around, as far as I c ould see (which isn't really very far) and I noticed a tiny sort of fuzz hair. Just one. It was way back in the guts of the machine (I have no idea what to call the parts). I got my trusty pipe cleaner and rubbed at it and it didn't budge. Ditto with the brush. So, I did what any sane person faced with a valuable piece of machinery would: I got the needle nosed tweezers. I put the tweezers on the fuzz and moved the end back (where I couldn't see) to the point of logical beginning. I grabbed and pulled -- gently. Bingo! A big whopping mess of dirty, oily, hardened fuzz came out. It was wrapped around something cylindrical and had to be torn off in two pieces. The biggest piece is almost an inch long, tightly curled, and about a quarter inch in thickness.
No wonder my poor little machine wouldn't go. Now it's stitching along like a champ.
I feel like Albert Schweitzer.
Sunny