Swatches disappeared!

Hello Adobe Forum,
I have adobe CS5 and when I opened my software today, I discovered my swatches were gone from my tool bar. They are not entirely gone because I can get to them from my swatch libraries, however, I cannot drag and drop these swatches into my toolbar in order to click on them. I am trying to use the pen tool to draw a simple shape and the only swatches that come up is the none option (the white box with the red line going through it) and the registration, which I admitadly don't know much about.
Can anyone help me with this. I am using a Mac. I cannot figure out how to draw my shapes without a fill and using a black outline.
Thanks!! 

Are you trying to ink over an image file (jpeg or the like) by just opening the file. An image file can be opened but has no swatches associated with it. You can use Open Swatch Library>Default Swatches from the Swatch panel flyout to add them. To have just a black line, select the Pen tool and change the color in the Color panel.

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