I very much like what you say about "newfound willingness." But I, Triceratops, am perfectly willing to experiment:

  cd project/loom
  cp -pr code ~/version/loom/95.before_zany_idea
  # hack away; restore if irredeemably stupid
  diff -r code ~/version/loom/93.released
  # you get the idea

I'm not trying to denigrate git. I still use it to publish code, e.g. http://github.com/chkoreff/Loom. But my dirty little secret is, I still shamefully use "cp -pr" and "diff -r" anyway, and only git-commit right before pushing to github.