I have the 0.47 version of Inkscape with the Spiro tool. I have been following the tutorials on how to make flourishes but something is wrong. When I try to do a line with the freehand pencil tool it seems to fill the line somehow and make it into a shape. I have shapes set to NONE and smoothing to 100 as in tut. I also have stroke black and fill none. There MUST be some setting that is stopping me from drawing a simple wavy line. Any ideas??

Hi. Do you have a screenshot or an example file?

I thought I had replied to this days ago (I bet my reply is open on my other PC, waiting to be posted). Anyway, I was also going to suggest posting a screenshot. But one other thing to look out for is the orientation of the object you use as a pattern. I think by default Inkscape expects the pattern object to lay horizontally, rather than vertically.