The redis client already converts things to UTF-8 when we feed it Unicode:

```
>>> r = Redis()
>>> r.set(u"Zoë", 'de haan')
True
>>> r.get(u"Zoë")
'de haan'
>>> r.set(u"de Haan", u'Zoë')
True
>>> r.get('de haan')
>>> r.get('de Haan')
'Zo\xc3\xab'
>>> _.decode('utf-8')
u'Zo\xeb'
>>> print _
Zoë
```
and
```
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> keys Zo*
1) "Zo\xc3\xab"
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> get Zoë
"de haan"
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> get de Haan
(error) ERR wrong number of arguments for 'get' command
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> get "de Haan"
"Zo\xc3\xab"
redis 127.0.0.1:6379>
```

perhaps I'm misunderstanding something though.