multiple categories displayed separately on home page and ordering posts within?

hi,

i’d like to do the following and i am not able to get my head around it… could someone point me in the right direction?

what i would like to do is:
1. have ONLY sticky posts on the home page
2. have multiple categories displayed separately:
– first the posts within categories 1, 2, or 3
– beneath that, posts within category 4 only
3. within each category, order the sticky posts by date

what i did right now is added this function right before the Loop

<?php if ( is_home()) { query_posts(array("post__in" =>get_option("sticky_posts")));} ?>

and to my surprise it basically does all i want (mostprobably because my category ID’s are in the right order by accident), but it orders the posts within category 4 backwards, i.e. oldest first, and i cannot get this to change.

any ideas as to how i can solve this? i’ve been reading the query_posts codex but whatever parameter i add i cannot get it to work.

BUT i am not a php expert in any way…

do i maybe need to call TWO query posts? the first one to return all the sticky ones, and the second one to order per category?

thanks for any help….

anton

ps i am using K2 1.0 as a theme