I've done this previously (I have modified Tamsyn's 15pt version and released it on the arch forums as 'Tamsyn2') and it works very well - particularly in locales where you rarely use anything outside of the ASCII charset. The basic idea is this - find a font you like and change the characters you don't use in said font to be small glyphs. (Gbdfed and Xmbdfed work well for this - just convert the font to bdf and open the font in either editor. When you're done, you can convert it back if you like). The glyphs you made are now represented as the character you replaced in the font and can be referenced as such. I've attached the current version of Tamsyn2 for reference or your use.
Tamsyn2_8x15r.pcf
Description: application/font-pcf
