An article about pollutants in mousepads along with my tendency to be paranoid (I didn't always have that, it was induced by the drugs in my tap-water. I swear!) recently convinced me, that I shouldn't replace my tiny mousepad by just buying a larger one. Since this was my initial plan, I am now somewhat lost. Obviously I have to somehow make my own pad, but that seems to be rather difficult. If I just nail several layers of stretched cloth to my desk, it would probably look and function like dirty laundry more than anything else within a few weeks of use. The guides on "how to make your own mousepad" I found scattered across the internet usually involved cutting out nice pictures and gluing them to another mousepad to make it look nicer, which wasn't exactly helpful to me. Has anyone else tried doing something like this? Any ideas on how to do it properly? On a scale from 1 to this how unnecessary are my concerns about polluted mousepads?

My current first world problems are that my zowie fk jitters like crazy whenever I lift it and that I'm too much of a noob to properly clean the sensor, so I came here for advice.
There might be a tiny crack in the lens, but there also is quite a lot of dust inside the sensor, so I can't quite tell. All of my cleaning efforts, which involved advanced tools such as folded paper and disgruntled stares, haven't really achieved much. I'm not sure if opening the mouse would make cleaning easier or if you can only reach the sensor from below. I don't want to just try it either, since the screws are hidden under my precious mousefeet which, judging by their price, must have been designed by either Karl Lagerfeld or Fatal1ty himself.
Also, in case the sensor turns out to be completely broken, how difficult is it to replace, for someone with the technical knowledge of a 15th century priest, whose only tools are folded paper and disgruntled stares?
Any form of help and mockery much appreciated.