Encoding issue since release of iOS 9.3

[ghost]

Issue started roughly around the release of iOS 9.3 - using Windows 7 VM with no change to environment (even restored an older snapshot to be sure).

Oddly enough, fetching for an iPad5,3 in the same VM works without a problem, so only having issues fetching for iPhone7,2

Fetching firmwares Apple is currently signing for iPhone7,2
Requesting blobs from Apple for iPhone7,2/13E238
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\temp\Python27\savethemblobs\savethemblobs.py", line 195, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "D:\temp\Python27\savethemblobs\savethemblobs.py", line 128, in main
    r = request_blobs_from_apple(board, f['build'], ecid, cpid, bdid)
  File "D:\temp\Python27\savethemblobs\savethemblobs.py", line 51, in request_blobs_from_apple
    r = requests.post(url, headers={'User-Agent': USER_AGENT}, data=tss_request_manifest(board, build, ecid, cpid, bdid))
  File "D:\temp\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests-2.9.1-py2.7.egg\requests\api.py", line 107, in post
    return request('post', url, data=data, json=json, **kwargs)
  File "D:\temp\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests-2.9.1-py2.7.egg\requests\api.py", line 53, in request
    return session.request(method=method, url=url, **kwargs)
  File "D:\temp\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests-2.9.1-py2.7.egg\requests\sessions.py", line 468, in request
    resp = self.send(prep, **send_kwargs)
  File "D:\temp\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests-2.9.1-py2.7.egg\requests\sessions.py", line 576, in send
    r = adapter.send(request, **kwargs)
  File "D:\temp\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests-2.9.1-py2.7.egg\requests\adapters.py", line 376, in send
    timeout=timeout
  File "D:\temp\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests-2.9.1-py2.7.egg\requests\packages\urllib3\connectionpool.py", line 559, in urlopen
    body=body, headers=headers)
  File "D:\temp\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests-2.9.1-py2.7.egg\requests\packages\urllib3\connectionpool.py", line 353, in _make_request
    conn.request(method, url, **httplib_request_kw)
  File "D:\temp\Python27\lib\httplib.py", line 1057, in request
    self._send_request(method, url, body, headers)
  File "D:\temp\Python27\lib\httplib.py", line 1097, in _send_request
    self.endheaders(body)
  File "D:\temp\Python27\lib\httplib.py", line 1053, in endheaders
    self._send_output(message_body)
  File "D:\temp\Python27\lib\httplib.py", line 901, in _send_output
    self.send(message_body)
  File "D:\temp\Python27\lib\httplib.py", line 873, in send
    self.sock.sendall(data)
  File "D:\temp\Python27\lib\socket.py", line 228, in meth
    return getattr(self._sock,name)(*args)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xb7' in position 31: ordinal not in range(128)