It's not you, it's me. Or maybe her.

Apparently I kill sewing machines. I own two vintage sewing machines, for some reason I don't really remember. My first one, Marianne, developed some timing issues which I attributed to taking her on a long car trip in a car whose shocks were dying. Charlotte was doing fine until yesterday. Now she's having the same problem that Marianne was. The faceplate (I think that's the correct word?) is getting all scratched up around the hole where the needle goes in.

I'm getting frustrated. I seem to be terrible for sewing machines, but I don't know what I'm doing that's screwing them up. I wonder if this could be related to the fact that my little sister likes to use my sewing machine (without permission) and doesn't know how to thread it and usually uses the wrong kind of needle. Is that likely to have been causing a problem? Or have I just had bad luck? I don't know what causes timing issues, but I'm reluctant to go spend $150 to get it fixed if it's just going to happen again and again. On the other hand, I can't exactly keep sewing on a machine that works like this...

Argh. It hasn't been a good week. Any advice?