reproduced with Inkscape 0.47 on OS X 10.5.8 (MBP, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM)
node-sculpting itself is acceptable, but it takes a really long time in the node tool until all nodes are selected (e.g. with Ctrl+A if you want to sculpt all parts of the path).
reproduced with Inkscape 0.47 on OS X 10.5.8 (MBP, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM)
node-sculpting itself is acceptable, but it takes a really long time in the node tool until all nodes are selected (e.g. with Ctrl+A if you want to sculpt all parts of the path).