Anything i want sticky, I just list in that category…

// select posts that have been manually chosen to appear at top of homepage (HP)
// - user chooses posts to appear by setting post_order

$hpsql = 'SELECT `P`.* , `M`.`meta_value` AS `post_order`;
$hpsql .= 'FROM `wp_posts` AS `P`';
$hpsql .= 'JOIN `wp_postmeta` AS `M` ON ( `M`.`post_id` = `P`.`ID`';
$hpsql .= 'AND `M`.`meta_key` = "post_order" )';
$hpsql .= 'WHERE `P`.`post_status` = "publish"';
$hpsql .= 'ORDER BY `post_order` ASC';

$hposts= $wpdb->get_results($hpsql);

foreach ($hposts as $post) : setup_postdata($post);
	$ord = $post->post_order;

endforeach;

** Even where orderby was set in query_posts() parameters **
(I don’t think all users experience this; I did.)

I needed to order my homepage posts by a custom ‘meta’ variable and ended up writing some SQL to do it, so it’s kind of irrelevant that they are sticky, except that the stickiness caused the problem. So this code turns out to be more about working with the wordpress database… anyway here it is:

get_results($hpsql);

	foreach ($hposts as $post) : setup_postdata($post);
		$play = $post->play_link;
		$ord = $post->post_order;

	?>

Comments welcome! (I’m very amateur at all this.)
Jon

<?php
global $post;
$args = array( 'numberposts' => 1, 'offset' => 0, 'category' => 4, 'include'  => get_option( 'sticky_posts' ) );
$myposts = get_posts( $args );
foreach( $myposts as $post ) :	setup_postdata($post); ?>
	<div class="<?php hybrid_entry_class(); ?>"><?php get_the_image( array( 'custom_key' => array( 'Thumbnail' ), 'size' => 'thumbnail' ) ); ?></div><!--.hentry-->
<?php endforeach; ?>