Oh Sew Chic I do understand where your elderly neighbour was coming from - my mother would also have been horrified with my changing needles so often. She had a Frister Rossman that she bought in 1936 a hand crank, and when I started using this machine I was not allowed to change the stitch length cos 'it would mess up the tension'. My mother also boasted that she had never ever changed a needle in that machine and yet she had stitched all manner of fabrics with this from curtaining to soft furnishing covers and that fabric was quite thick, to canvas awnings, clothes including muslin bridesmaids dresses for my elder sister and I and this was after she had made the covers to recover some armchairs. When I bought my first sewing machine, again a straight stitch this was electric, and thus she was rather jealous of this and would use it without my knowing when I was at work, however when I got married my machine came with me much to her disgust so whilst she still wanted to sew she was not happy with a hand crank, so my father bought an electric motor and fitted this on for her. It wasn't until they moved to Suffolk in the early 70's to retire and on finding that she could attend some sewing classes which she enjoyed she was persuaded to buy a Bernina 830 Record in 1975 with a small legacy that she had inherited - this is now my main go to machine and whilst she had used it no way had it been used as much as my own Elna SU which I bought in the same year. Oh blunt and slightly bent needles can cause so much damage, and when I inherited the Bernina I did find all manner of different packets of needles in the accessory box - I presume she had bought these in a small local town - just an ordinary haberdashery - and no way was I going to use these they were disposed of very quickly. I also found no oil with the machine, so I went to my nearest machine dealer and asked if they would order me a bottle of the Bernina oil, and in fact they gave me one from a new machine as I was so insistent that it was Bernina oil and not a large can of Singer oil.
I also cannot understand it when people buy these beautiful but expensive machines but then quibble about feet and other attachments for them. So many times we hear that people have bought a job lot of x number feet at a silly cheap price and then find that they cause their machine problems in trying to use them. Yes I know that Bernina feet are expensive, very expensive for some, but there are ways around getting these if they really need/want them - I personally just asked my family for feet for Christmas and my birthday, I did the ordering so I knew exactly what I was getting, and thus I now have the most wonderful collection of feet/attachments/accessories for all my machines and I really do use them. Only this last week or so I have had three sewing machines in use plus an overlocker, I have the most wonderful triple straight stitch on my Elna - I use this for sewing in the sleeves and the nature of this stitch means that the seam cannot pop, I used the older Bernina for the main construction of my garments, and then the Artista for the buttonholes and the top stitching - yes I know I could have used either the Elna or the older Bernina for the buttonholes, but I do like them all exactly the same size and the Artista makes this so much easier to do and I had twenty buttonholes to do.
I am just so glad that the jammed thread was so easily removed and relatively painless, but I am annoyed that it happened in the first place, I shall be extra vigilant in future when threading this.