Once a year, you should do this. On the whole machine, you can run Baby oil. It makes the featherweight shine, then take a dry rag to wipe most of the Baby oil. This will not hurt your fabrics. I have had this needle movement problem with a couple of the old machines.
Oil has a tendancy to shellac when it is old and unused.
So, it becomes sticky and the mechanism drags. In order to dissolve the hardened oil, put a few drops of kerosene on the mechanism and work it. Kerosene is nothing more than very thin oil. After working the kerosene in, give it a good lube with regular sewing machine oil. This has worked on all my machines having this problem.