While you've said you don't want to soak, I soak wool items all the time and have never had any problem whatsoever. This includes my hand-knitted items as well as wool garments. I use Eucalan, a wool wash which helps with softening as it contains some lanolin. It's very gentle and safe for other delicate materials like silk, and doesn't need to be rinsed. After the soak you can press the item between towels to squeeze out excess water and then lay flat to dry. I have used my washer spin cycle for larger garments that absorb a lot of water, but probably wouldn't do this with a hand-knit garment. Something like a wool coat I would, but YMMV. I've done this for many years and never had any damage to garments, although you might potentially get a bit of colour bleed depending on the quality of the dyes. This isn't typical in my experience, and when it's happened has been minimal.
